How much should we like dogs? How about foreign dogs, meaning those not from Magnolia? What if you have three of them? Or eight of them? What if they bark a lot, and ruin the grass?
These and other vital questions arise from the forthcoming inauguration of Seattle’s first new permanent off-leash area (OLA) in seven years, to be located at Magnolia Manor Park on 28th Avenue.
The first new OLA in seven years? Can you believe it? We’ve approved (italic)a third of a billion dollars(end italic) in park levies since 2000, yet in this city full of dogs and their owners, our feckless, oblivious, arrogant, and dang near worthless city government has just gotten around to approving one, count ‘em, one, new permanent place to (legally) let your dog run free.
The Magnolia Manor OLA, set to open sometime this summer, will be a postage stamp of a spot: half an acre. It will encompass most of the currently usable real estate at the park, a lot of which sits behind a fence surrounding a cover over its reservoir. Separately, there’s a park expansion planned, but it’s not funded.
Apparently, Magnolia residents will have to hold bake sales to raise the money, because the parks department can’t find any.
Meantime, say goodbye to the grass, and much of the ambiance of our pleasant little neighborhood park. Say hello to mulch chips and dust in dry weather, and mud in wet weather. Unless, that is, the city decides to lay down special rounded paw-friendly gravel, as they’ve done at Plymouth Pillars, a small OLA on Boren Avenue where it crosses I-5, at the edge of Capitol Hill, and at a tiny new temporary OLA just off of Denny Way near Eastlake Boulevard. (I vote for gravel. It’s not pretty, but it’s much cleaner.)
There’s no question that Seattle needs more off-leash areas, so it’s hard to oppose the new one at Magnolia Manor. But it’s equally difficult to be enthusiastic, especially given that the place has been a de facto off-leash area for, well, just about forever.
But now it’ll be legal, which means it’ll be on the city’s website. Which will likely make it a magnet for the other side of Interbay. Honest, I love Queen Anne. Sort of like I love France: at a distance. But can’t someone put a dog park over there, too?
The news isn’t entirely discouraging. To work, an OLA needs a “steward,” someone who assumes the unenviable task of working with those city bureaucrats who have been doing God-knows-what with those hundreds of millions of park levy dollars. Toni Imfeld, of Friends of Magnolia Manor Park, will be the first steward. She deserves nothing but praise for her willingness to take a volunteer position that you couldn’t pay me enough to do.
The small OLAs with stewards were clean when I visited. In fact, the Regrade dog area at the corner of Third Avenue and Bell Street is an oasis in what is otherwise a dicey area. The dog walkers have run the crack addicts out, or so I was told when I visited.
Will Magnolia Manor Park now become a destination for those professional dog walkers with their vans full of canines? Given the city government’s lack of action on OLAs in the past decade, along with relatively abundant parking in the area, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise. And with the disaster that is the large OLA at Golden Gardens Park at 85th Street in Ballard, who could blame people for traveling here?
When I visited that shabby, depressing mud pit last weekend, I spotted a flier seeking information about the owner of a pit bull that had mauled someone’s Golden Retriever. A nearby bathroom was filthy, and on the way out a lunatic who babbled about “Catholic liars” verbally accosted me. Ain’t we got fun?
The best defense against a mass shift from Golden Gardens to Magnolia Manor will be the chronic backups on the Ballard Bridge. And we won’t even talk about the city’s failure to set aside off-leash space in Discovery Park. That would be rocket science, and we know that City Hall is not exactly the place to find anyone familiar with that discipline.
The singularity of the Magnolia Manor OLA is the crux of this writer’s skepticism. If this was to be the fifth or eighth or 12th new neighborhood dog park, I’d be right there with the rest of the pack. But the first new permanent OLA in seven years in a city that doesn’t have enough of them? Not so much. I hope it works out, but I’m not holding my breath.
Magnolia Mencken welcomes your feedback. You can contact him at magmenck@gmail.com.
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