City considers city’s center for new dog park

By Scott Aust, Journal staff | Saturday, January 13, 2007

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RAPID CITY -- A new off-leash dog park centrally located would be a boon for visitors and residents as well, officials considering the creation of such an area between Fifth Street and East Boulevard say.

Jerry Cole, parks and recreation director, said the city currently lacks any place near the downtown business district for visitors or residents to let their dogs run.

“Since we have a lot of visitors to town, we felt providing a place down in the neighborhood where there are several hotels and visitors walk along the path, it would be a very good place to have a dog off-leash park,” he said.

The Holiday Inn, the Radisson and the Hotel Alex Johnson would all be within walking distance of the proposed dog park area, Cole said, noting that national tourism data he has seen indicate an increasing number of people now travel with their pets.

“That’s one of the things that we probably will be doing in the future is marketing our off-leash areas because more than 50 percent of travelers now travel with pets,” Cole said. “Most of the time when I take my dogs with me, I have no idea where I can go.”

Some of the businesses in that area, as well as citizens of the North Rapid neighborhood, also came forward and requested an off-leash area, Cole said. Most indicated they wanted someplace to take their dogs and run them off-leash without traveling to the outskirts of town, he said.

The city has three other off-leash areas at Braeburn Park, west of the Cleghorn Springs fish hatchery; Knollwood, south of Interstate 90 between Maple Street and La Crosse Street; and Robbinsdale, on the southeast side of the park near the walking track.

“We felt having one in the center of town would provide closer access for some of the people who can’t drive, or don’t want to drive out (to the other locations),” he said.

Also, the neighborhood policing unit suggested that the parks and recreation advisory board institute some kind of activity in the area south of Prairie Market that would help reduce or eliminate some of the problems caused by transients.

“The off-leash area was one activity we thought might bring more people down to that area,” Cole said. “It was felt if we brought more of those types of legitimate uses down there, the uses the police have problems with sometimes go away. We’re hoping with the cause and effect of this, we can have fewer arrests, less of those types of uses that we all don’t want to see around our trail system.”

Creating a new off-leash area will require the city council to approve an ordinance amendment to deviate from the city’s leash law. It would operate like the city’s other three off-leash areas in that dogs must be under verbal control of owners at all times and owners are responsible for cleaning up their pet’s waste.

The council will consider the ordinance amendment for the first time Monday. Ordinances require two votes by the council before becoming official.

Contact Scott Aust at 394-8415 or scott.aust@rapidcityjournal.com