Spokane Parks turning away from Upriver Drive dog park, citing neighbors’ concerns, shoreline issues

Spokane will not be getting a dog park along Upriver Drive to replace one on the South Hill displaced by construction of a new school if the Park Board approves a course reversal by city staff.

Spokane Parks & Recreation will ask the panel Thursday to take back its May approval of the controversial site on the northeast edge of city limits. The request comes after the Minnehaha Neighborhood Council pulled its support of the project, planned to be between 7 and 9 acres in a treed area near Boulder Beach and the climbing rocks at John H. Shields Park. Further review of the site indicated its size would need to be reduced because of its proximity to the Spokane River.

“This one had been very problematic,” Garrett Jones, director of Spokane Parks and interim city administrator, said Tuesday. He said the request to reconsider the location did not mean the city was abandoning a dog park of 7 acres or larger, but an acknowledgment that the current requirements for the project may need to be rethought because of public disapproval of multiple parks-owned properties as potential new locations.

“When I have neighborhood councils coming out in support, and then changing that, we’ve got to take that seriously,” Jones said.

Jones said after the Park Board gave its approval of the site in May, designs were prepared that required development review. During that process, the city realized its shoreline maps were inaccurate, and there was actually less usable space on the parcel than they planned, Jones said. Permitting would have set the project out to 2024, he said, well after the opening of the new school.

“The bottom line is, I think it’s our job as stewards of the taxpayers to listen,” Jones said. The Parks Department still plans to work with Spokane Public Schools to provide a smaller, 2-acre park located next to Mullan Road Elementary near the site of the previous unofficial park. The resolution will not affect that work, Jones said.

Park officials will ask that money from the school district that was pledged to pay for the new park be invested in the existing dog facility at High Bridge Park.

Jones said if the Park Board approves the resolution Thursday, work would begin “immediately” with the school district; SpokAnimal, which operates the existing park under a lease with the city; and the American Indian Community Center, which has plans for a new community center at Riverside Avenue and A Street.

“I’ve had initial conversations with the West Hills and Peaceful Valley neighborhood chairs,” Jones said, referring to the two neighborhoods adjacent to the existing dog park slated for improvements.

Neighbors said they were not informed of plans to put a dog park in their backyard when it went to a vote of the Park Board in May. The residents in a cluster of homes north of the proposed site argued that the same concerns that had derailed other dog park options in Underhill and Upper Lincoln parks were also true of the land off Upriver: wildlife disruption, public safety issues and traffic.

The site was also near Felts Field and the Spokane Police Academy’s gun range, both of which produce noise that could scare dogs at the property, neighbors argued.

Leni Selvaggio, a longtime resident of the neighborhood who testified against the dog park proposal at the meeting in May, said he was pleased parks officials re-evaluated their recommendation.

“It’s a win for natural open space, that it remains so,” Selvaggio said. He said neighbors were also pleased that parking lot improvements were still coming to Shields Park, and hoped that the Parks Department would continue plans for tree removal in the area due to damage caused by pine beetles.

The Parks Department has been seeking a new location for a park in an at-times contentious public debate that has lasted for more than a year. The department signed an agreement with Spokane Public Schools to find a new location after construction of the Carla Peperzak Middle School closed an unofficial meeting spot just south of 63rd Avenue.

The city sent out a survey to the public in August that received 1,158 responses that sent some conflicting messages to park officials. For example, more than 61% of respondents said they wanted a large natural area that was fenced for a new dog park, but 57% also said the size should be reduced if needed to reduce the impact on natural areas.

The city’s inventory of available land eventually produced portions of Underhill and Upper Lincoln park as possibilities for a replacement, but those were rejected by officials, including a 6-3 vote against Lincoln Park by the Park Board in October. Meanwhile, the Parks department’s memorandum of understanding with Spokane Public Schools required that a new amenity be open along with opening of the school, which is scheduled to take place in August.

The Spokane Park Board is scheduled to consider the resolution at its 3:30 p.m. meeting Thursday at Spokane City Hall, 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd.