South Loop Dog Park Action Cooperative

These are images of preliminary dog park design proposals for the 16th & Wabash park that were recently discussed publicly for the first time.

These are works in progress and they present two different visions – Plan A: a curvilinear droplet of a dog park surrounded by people friendly* pathways and defined by grassy berms. Plan B: a rectilinear block of a park that plays off the diagonal arrangement of different surfaces – artificial grass, decomposed granite and asphalt.

Public areas at the north end of the park are being designed to facilitate access by True Rock Ministries for church events.

The current space is about 1.1 acres in total (click for full size; image is to scale with the drawings):

Plan A (click for full size):

Plan B (click for full size):

Note the inclusion of ‘small dog’ and ‘large dog’ areas, and the use of various surface materials in the park.

Also note the inclusion of a ‘concession area’ in both plans.  In plan A, this area would be associated directly with a restaurant being developed to open in the building south of the park.

Alderman Fioretti’s office is soliciting input: ‘For more information and to make comments, please email the project team at: 1629Wabash@gmail.com.’

We at the South Loop Dog PAC would like to hear your ideas, as well.  Feel free to comment here or to email us your comments and ideas.

We’ll continue to discuss the issues raised by this project on this website as the project develops.

*Not ‘resident friendly’ as is stated (and here) in contrast to ‘dog friendly’!  Dog owners are residents of the South Loop.

OK Go – White Knuckles Video. Very cool. Continuous take!

The trainers who contributed to this video discuss what was involved on their blog (note: page doesn’t display with Safari).

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)??

This is a brief update about issues at Coliseum Park after discussion with Janis Taylor of the Chicago Park District 9.8.09.

1.  The east side gate.

The issues raised here were:

1. the need to fix the gap that currently allows small dogs to escape the dog run (note the brick in the picture!)
2. the possibility of installing a double gated entry here to make the park secure.

Janis reports that CPD personnel have taken a look at the gate.

They are most likely going to close off the gate, because it opens onto the children’s playground (which is contrary to current ‘DFA’ policy).

This will leave the park with one double-gated entry at the north end.

2. The depressions around the drains.

The issue raised here was that these retain dirty water and allow bacteria and parasites to collect and possibly spread disease.  This issue was initially reported to CPD over two years ago.

Janis reports that CPD personnel think that they “are not that low”.

When pressed, she agreed that CPD policy was not to allow pools of contaminated water at DFAs (as occurs around the drains and at other points in the dog run).  Janis said that she would  look into this again.

3.  The water fountain.

The issue raised here is that the water fountain is rusted and decaying, and that there is no doggie water fountain.

Janis suggests that maybe if they can find one lying around, maybe a concrete fountain, they might install it. We have heard that at other Chicago DFA’s ‘replacement’ of a water fountain consisted of installing another used fountain in place of the existing one. This will probably not make anyone happy.

The alternative is for the DogPAC and the user community to purchase a fountain.  CPD will  not cost share on this.  CPD plumbers will have to install it.  A weather resistant outdoor fountain costs on the order of $3000.

The Chicago Park District guidelines for DFA committees, including the South Loop Dog PAC, are explicitly laid out in the CPD DFA guidelines document.  A copy of the  document, dated 4.22.2008, has been uploaded to the website and it is available for download.  The new guidelines page outlines the responsibilities of the Dog PAC with respect to maintenance of the Grant Bark Park and the Coliseum Park DFA.   It’s up to us, folks!