South Loop Dog Park Action Cooperative

Interesting news in Alderman Pat Dowell’s December 3 2010 Ward Newsletter – an effort is underway to locate a dog park in the nearby Bronzeville neighborhood!

Possible New Bronzeville Dog Park

 

Bronzeville resident Ephraim Lee has been working with Alderman Pat Dowell and her Chief of Staff, Audrey Wade to create a dog park for Bronzeville. Below is the text of a letter he sent to the Third Ward office and asked to be shared with Third Ward residents. Please let Ephraim and the Third Ward Office know what you think.

Greetings to all residents of Bronzeville; my name is Ephraim Lee and I am writing this letter to announce some exciting news. As a dog owner I have found it difficult to find open and inviting places within our community that allows our dogs the freedom of running, playing, and socializing with one another, and I know that I am not alone in this dilemma. Well, after speaking with Alderwoman Patricia Dowell and her wonderful assistant Audrey Wade, we have decided that what is missing in this community is a public dog park/run.

It is well known that dog owners everywhere love and cherish their pets, and that is no less so here in Bronzeville. A dog park would give our four-legged companions-and us-places to meet and mingle, sniff, and stretch their legs. Information could be shared about the numerous changes in our pet’s healthcare, or where to locate a very responsible veterinarian. Of course as a community we would be primarily responsible for its upkeep and maintenance, but this should not present a problem in the least.

But in order to make this dream a reality, we need everyone’s help in the search for the perfect lot on which to build. Please note that the lot in question has to be of manageable size, and as centrally located as possible. All entries will be accepted and after careful review the winning lot will be selected, graveled, and fenced in, for our pet’s enjoyment. Smells will be kept at a minimum through everyone picking up after their furry friend, and a plastic baggie container will be placed on site for collections. One other thing that bears noting is the fact that many vacant lots are privately owned, and if this is the case that said lot might not be picked for the site. I will make sure that all updates on this search are placed in the monthly newsletter, issued each month by the alderwoman’s office, or if you prefer, you can be contacted via e-mail.

So for all suggestions and picks, please e-mail them to: xhle@hotmail.com, or contact me by phone at: (773)556-6665. I look forward to everyone pitching in and helping me give those four legged friends who love us, a place to love!

We applaud Mr Lee’s efforts to create a new dog park for Bronzeville!

So, it has been about eleven months since the South Loop Dog PAC started supplying dog poo bags at the two South Loop dog parks, and we can now estimate the total number of bags that we’re going to have to supply each year.

How many bags? Twenty two thousand.

(Yes, that’s 22,000.)

That is a lot of bags.

22000 bags/year is about 1800 bags/month, or about 61 bags each day.

That’s 61 poos picked up each day*.

That’s 22000 poos picked up each year, with your support.

This is a good thing.

How much did it cost us?  Well, each bag costs $0.032, plus the volunteer time donated to refill the dispensers.

The two dispensers cost about $100, and we can amortize that over a few years…

So 61 bags/day is about $1.92.  Or, 61 poos picked up for less than two dollars a day.

That is money well spent.

—

*What is the ‘bag efficiency’?   How many bags are stolen?  Wasted?  We don’t know yet. We do try to track usage, but don’t have complete information.  A few people are coordinating this effort, and we don’t have time to do everything!

Yes, it would help if an army of volunteers were willing to step forward! Please do!

You all should check out the new website for MonDog, the organization that maintains the Montrose Dog Beach.

There’s a lot of good info on the site (we’ve already linked to their nice explication of the DFA rules).  Give them some support!

I went by GBP yesterday to refill the bag dispenser and noticed some things –

• The CPD Plumbing Dept has installed a valve on the water hydrant at the center of the park.  I am not a plumber, but from my conversation with Mike the plumber from the CPD my understanding is that this is a 3 ft deep freezeless water source that is designed so that the standpipe drains out when the water source is turned off for winter.  It was not installed for and it’s not designed for our application – watering dogs!   I was assured that it only takes a little pressure on the turnkey to turn off the hydrant, but on Friday, I found that I could not turn off the water source that way at all!  So, we leave the hydrant on, control the water flow with the new valve, and hope for the best!

• We can add the water timer again, but the only one I found  in the lock box was jammed up with a broken fitting.  I took it home to fix.

• People are putting poo bags in the sand container.  This is not a good thing, and we should probably move the container up by the gates (since it is a trash can…).   Perhaps it could be converted to be used as a bona fide trash container near the lock box, but I don’t know if CPD staff would clean it out.  We’ll check into this possibility.

• For some reason, people are taking the combination lock off (‘WOOF’!) and leaving it in the lock box.  What’s up with this?  Who are ‘people‘?  If long term we want to store supplies in the box, like the 1000’s of dog poo bags that we use a year at GBP, it’s going to have to be left securely locked.  This has to become practice, or else IMHO we need to put a keyed lock on the lock box sometime this summer.

• Both of the main drains were completely plugged by accumulated dog hair!  Yikes!  I found that the best way to get this up was to use a poo bag to scrape it up and then toss it in the trash.  This is a task listed in the ‘Got A Minute‘ flyer,  but clearly people at the park don’t ‘have much time’ for this – we’re going to need to come up with a better way to communicate the need to take care of this on an ongoing basis.

On May 1st,  South Loop Dog PAC coordinated with representatives of two other Chicago ‘Dog “Friendly Area’ committees, Puptown and Churchill Park, to represent Chicago dog area committees at Bark in the Park.  Some pictures from the event:

Debby Kotzen (Churchill Park) and John Lenti (Puptown) spread the word.

Pamela Focia (SLDogPAC) watches over our display.

Puptown's display of hats and T-shirts. Nice stuff.

Churchill Dog Park had T-shirts and Calendars available. The committee has a long term fund raising vision - represented by the fire hydrant waiting to be 'filled' - that should translate into some cool projects down the road.

Discussing dog issues of the day.

This seemed like a useful exercise, but we didn’t sell much, if anything.  A bunch of people took membership information from the parks they frequented, and we hope this translates into ongoing support. If we do do this again, we should be clear that the function is to raise awareness of the role of DFA Committees in maintaining the off leash areas in Chicago, not fundraising. Next time, we might want to have a banner of some sort, and try to get more of the Chicago DFA support groups involved. We do have a Facebook page already!

Some things we learned:

• By far most of the people we asked were completely unaware that all dog friendly areas in Chicago are user-supported. This is a failure of communication by the city and the Chicago Park District. We will be bringing this to their attention – all DFA license holders should understand from the moment they pick up their tag: your off leash dog park is maintained by users like you, not by the City!

• The most requested information was ‘where are the dog parks‘.  Luckily we had made one copy of a Google map that showed the location of the DFAs in Chicago, but for the future – we need more of these.  We’ll be adding a link to the map on this website soon.

• And… John Lenti of Puptown is truly a masterful ‘barker‘ (pun intended).

How about changing from this:

to this:    

The former is the way the worthless little gravel areas in the Coliseum Park DFA are currently ‘designed’. Features include:

• Gravel is at or above grade level
• Gravel spills out all over the place (and out of the park)
• Odd little triangles throughout the ‘DFA’

The latter is they way the dog relief areas at the Burnham Station Condominiums were built. Features include:

• Space is defined by landscape timbers.
• Space was excavated to put the gravel below grade level.
• No spillage at all.

However, the cost for four (4) of these spaces at Burnham Station was about $3600, total.  That’s a lot of money.

If we focused on one or two  areas in the Coliseum Park DFA – say, the north and south ends of the run – and did away with the rest, maybe this would be feasible? The gravel areas would still require cleaning and gravel replacement every year or two, but there wouldn’t be gravel spilling out all over the place onto the walkways and onto the street.  And the DFA would look one increment less of a dump.  It may be worth a shot, but at this point who knows whether the user community would support the cost.  (Hint:  the CPD is not going to do this – we asked)??