Arlington’s second dog park planned for city’s west side

Take heart, Arlington humans who are dog tired of making long trips to find places their pooches can romp untethered.

The city is about to begin designing its second dog park, a $500,000 project planned for a 7.5-acre strip along Rush Creek in west Arlington.

Projected to open in the fall of 2016, the park will be a welcome alternative to many who haul their hounds from west and north Arlington, and beyond the city, to the Tails N’ Trails Dog Park in far southeast Arlington, which opened in 2008.

“There are lots and lots of pets on this side of town,” said Councilwoman Kathryn Wilemon, whose west Arlington District 4 includes the park. She admits to having no dog in this hunt, but she sympathizes with those who do.

“I see people walking them all the time. They’re not off-leash, however, and that’s the beauty of this,” she said. “You can go down and relax and watch your dog play.”

The park site, at West Pioneer Parkway and Valleywood Drive, already serves as more than just a future dog playground. It’s a key component in the city’s Rush Creek flood mitigation program. In 2012, the city bought the flood-prone Shady Valley Condominiums there for $4.5 million and demolished the complex to add acres of absorbent green space along the creek floodway.

The 2014 bond program will fund the park construction. The city has commissioned Pacheco Koch Consulting Engineers to design the park, a six-month process expected to being finished within a month, said Eric Seebok, city park project manager and landscape architect.

Construction would start in the spring.

 

“We definitely design dog parks for the dogs,” said Nick Nelson, who heads Pacheco Koch’s landscape architect group in Fort Worth. “That may sound silly, but we’re passionate dog owners as well as dog park designers.”

Parks popular in Tarrant County

The last public dog park the firm designed opened this summer in Richardson and fits snugly among the concrete support beams of the George Bush Turnpike. The park’s name: Bush Central Barkway.

Many cities in Tarrant County have dog parks now, including Fort Worth, North Richland Hills, Southlake and Euless, as do some master-planned communities, including Viridian in north Arlington.

Fort Worth has Fort Woof Dog Park, east of downtown, and will soon open its 10-acre $1.48 million second dog park at Z Boaz Park, west of downtown.

The doggy play pieces and other amenities for the Rush Creek park — it doesn’t have a final name yet — will be selected during the planning. But Seebok said many will resemble features at the Tails N’ Trails Dog Park, about 10 miles and 20 minutes away at 950 SE Green Oaks Blvd., behind the Arlington Animal Services.

Those include fenced areas to separate large dogs from little ones, walking nature trails, drinking fountains for both pet and owner, and “pet waste stations” with baggies and receptacles, Seebok said.

And, of course, shade. But there the older park might have the advantage. It’s shaded by an almost-forest cleared of underbrush for free-roaming animals and their people. The new park site, which has only been natural since the condos were cleared, will rely on lots of shade structures.

The new park, like the old, would also employ something akin to crop rotation — keeping one large area fenced off and used when other sections need relief from dog traffic.

“They really pound it down,” Seebok said. “It’s hard to keep lush.”

Other amenities could include an agility course and a segregated area for dogs that are old or injured.

The latter would have been perfect for Laurie and David Streeb’s late keeshond, Heidi, they said.

“She had arthritis. She couldn’t run around like that,” Laurie Streeb said last week as she and her husband relaxed on a bench at Tails N’ Trails, watching their beagle Chloe and miniature schnauzer Harley romp in the late-afternoon shade.

They were among a handful of pet owners using the park at that time, during rush-hour traffic. Several said they live much closer to Tails N’ Trails’ than the west Arlington part site but will happily visit.

“I’m glad the people of west Arlington will have that new park,” said Bill Lawson, as he and wife Cindy played with their Shetland sheepdogs Jackson and Piper. “I know a lot of them come here, but a lot of them go to Fort Worth, because this one is quite a ways for them to come.”

‘Great demand for dog parks’

The Rush Creek park will join Arlington’s 4,069 acres of developed parks and natural areas, said De’Onna Garner, the city’s park planning manager.

Although there are no immediate plans or potential sites, Garner said, the city needs a third park and its most strategic location would be north Arlington. But the need for someplace that is a fair distance from neighborhoods adds to the challenge.

“The majority of north Arlington is built out, so just finding a parcel of land that fits the criteria will be difficult,” she said. And because of redevelopment in that area, she added: “That’s high-dollar property. We don’t want to spend $5 million on a piece of land for a dog park.

“But we’re continuing to look,” she said.

Mayor Jeff Williams, who lives just south of Lake Arlington on the city’s west side, said there’s “no question there’s a great demand for dog parks.”

He plans to be among the first at the park with his German shepherd and little white fluffy bichon frise. Currently he takes them to the nearby Bowman Springs Park.

“There are an amazing number of pet owners in Arlington,” Williams said. “And we all love our pets.”

This story was originally published October 17, 2015 at 12:08 PM with the headline "Arlington’s second dog park planned for city’s west side."