By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
A city of Yachats committee that oversees use and changes to city property has again given its cautious approval for a group to keep gathering information on building a dog park somewhere in town.
Mary Aebi and Carita Edson sketched out their initial plans to the Yachats Parks and Commons Commission on Thursday, Feb. 20. They had appeared before the commission twice previously to gauge its interest in creating a dog park on city property.
But last week they presented more detailed arguments, possible locations and steps they hope to take to create a park.
The goal is to create a centrally-located “beautiful park” where locals and visitors can exercise and socialize their dogs off leash, said said Carita Edson, one of the primary backers of the idea.
“Dog parks always have dogs in them,” said Edson. “It can be a great community resource.”
Commission members, some of whom said they were initially skeptical of the idea, said the group should keep planning – doing more work on locations, costs and how to pay for it.
The commission also wants to revisit the city’s 2011 plan for the parks area behind the Yachats Commons. The city went through two years of work on the plan, which summarized ideas for the city’s property to the west of the Commons. But little to nothing has been developed from the plan since it was approved nine years ago.
Now, the dog park idea may force the commission, and eventually the City Council, to consider ideas for the former ballfield, which is a little four-acres of city-mowed grass.
Edson and Mary Aebi said they scouted three possible locations for the park: part of the city’s ball field, a one-acre forested area owned by the city north of West Fourth Street, and one acre at the intersection of West Second Street and Ocean View Drive owned by Oregon State Parks and Recreation Department.
Their idea size would be one-half to one acre in size, they said, with a rustic, likely wooden, fence and covered in fiber or wood chips.
Commissioner member Michael Hempen said he’s open to the idea but worries about fencing off a big chunk of the grass field.
“But it’s timely,” Hempen said, acknowledging that people are changing how they socialize locally and travel with pets. “The first question I ask is ‘Does it help the city’ … and it does.”
Commissioner Dean Schrock said the ball field “was once sacrosanct” but is not useable in its current condition.
“Surprisingly, I’m intrigued,” Schrock said. “There has to be a better way to use that green space.”
The city has also received a $100,000 state grant to pave the road between the 501 Building and the ball field. Initial sketches call for two lanes, a sidewalk and room to park cars.
Commission members said they would look more deeply into the 2011 parks master plan at its March meeting, see how the dog park might fit in, and weigh it against other issues facing the Commons building and the city’s upcoming budget deliberations.
The City Council has also encouraged the commission to hold a community forum on the idea.
“Whatever we push forward has to have a plan, a scope of work and a budget so that we don’t have these wonderful ideas that just go up on the wall,” said commission chair John Purcell, referring to maps from the 2011 parks plan that have lined the walls of the council chambers for years.
