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Citizen committee recommends four areas
Lee Perlman
THE MID-couty MEMO
East Portland isn’t going to the dogs. Instead, a citizens committee is ready to suggest where the dogs of Mid-Multnomah County should go.
The East Portland Off-Leash Site Selection Committee is readying recommendations to the Portland Parks Bureau on where in East Portland dogs should be allowed to run free, not subject to leash laws. At press time they are recommending four locations:
(1) Half of the six-acre Holladay Park East at Northeast 128th Avenue and Holladay Street.
(2) A 1.2 acre portion of Parkrose High School’s property at 12003 N.E. Shaver St.
(3) Cherry Park, a 5.5-acre property at Southeast 110th Avenue and Stephens Street, with the off-leash area occupying 2 acres.
(4) Parklane Park, a 25-acre park, half of which is currently undeveloped, at Southeast 155th Avenue and Main Street.
At press time, the committee tentatively recommended Holladay Park East as its “preferred site”, and Cherrywood Park and Parkrose High as “secondary sites”. With regard to Parklane Park, the committee recommended it be removed from consideration for now, but that an off-leash area there be considered as part of a future master planning process. This will be forwarded to the Portland Bureau of Parks by February 1.
East Portland was one of four neighborhood coalitions that contracted with the Bureau of Parks to provide a local solution to one of its knottiest problems: what to do about dogs in parks. There is a high demand for a place for dogs to roam free, and many owners simply take it upon themselves to let them go regardless of laws against this practice. On the other hand, the Parks Bureau gets thousands of complaints every year about the conduct of dogs running free. Few of these complaints involve biting or physical attacks, but free-running dogs can be a menace to children, the elderly or handicapped, and nuisances to people trying to quietly enjoy the park. A high percentage of the complaints are from other dog owners, particularly those who keep their dogs on leashes.
The bureau has experimented with designating certain areas as off-leash zones, such as inner Southeast Portland’s Mount Tabor Park and Southwest’s Gabriel Park. The result has been that the off-leash areas have attracted so many dogs and been so over-used that all vegetation was worn away and the sites became little more than mud pits.
“The Parks Bureau had never done this before”, Woodland Park’s Alesia Reese, chair of the East Portland Off-Leash Committee, told the Mid-county MEMO. “They arbitrarily picked five locations. They didn’t have an open process with information from and dialogue with neighbors. Unfortunately, Gabriel Park bore the brunt of this.”
The Parks Bureau therefore determined to provide one (or more) off-leash area in each of the city’s seven coalition areas. They offered a contract to neighborhood coalitions to do the outreach work for them. The East Portland Neighborhood Office was one of four that agreed to the contract.
The East Portland process
Reese’s committee established criteria for a good off-leash area. Such an area, they said, shouldn’t adversely affect water quality or wildlife habitat, be an environmental zone, displace existing uses or future uses designated by planning processes. They need a parking area, and proximity to homes and the receptivity of neighbors are factors. With regard to this last, a plus for Parkrose High is that the Parkrose Neighborhood Association supports it, while a negative for Parklane is opposition from the Centennial Neighborhood Association on several grounds.
The committee, which consisted of seven individuals from five neighborhoods, identified 42 potential sites, which they visited and rated. After narrowing the field to four, they held an open house on October 3, with notice sent to 853 nearby neighbors of whom 35 showed up. From this and subsequent mail-ins they received about 60 sets of written comments.
They also received a certain amount of venting from those who showed up. “We didn’t encounter any dog haters,” Reese says. “There was an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with existing park conditions. There was a misconception that the parks (selected as off-leash areas) wouldn’t have supporting services.”
The committee report strongly calls for proper improvements to any parks selected, including fencing off the area, gates, facilities to dispose of trash and dog droppings, water, lighting, parking, signage, and a non-harmful surface where it is not already in place. Also, Reese says, Multnomah County Animal Control would have to “suck it up and enforce the existing laws”. Under pressure from the committee, Animal Control and other agencies attended the open house.
Conspicuous by their absence was a representative from the Parks Bureau. “I was disappointed they didn’t come,” Reese says. “Our committee was left standing there taking the heat.” It was not the only criticism against the Bureau. The report says, “The committee started with a rather inadequate list of 13 park sites provided by (Parks) staff hoping there were substantially more...Members requested more information regarding other facilities owned by other city bureaus, but that information was not forthcoming.”
Pros and Cons
Each of the four potential sites recommended have identified pluses and minuses as off-leash areas. Holladay Park East is centrally located, has no current regular organized activities, is not near a school or child-related facility, and has a grass surface. So far, the idea has received a reasonably friendly reaction from neighbors. It would need additional fencing and parking, and is near a residential area.
The Parkrose High site has many of the same advantages: a grass surface, no current organized uses, easily accessible, some fencing in place, has the support of the Parkrose Neighborhood Association, and has few neighbors likely to complain. The principal liability: it is owned by the Parkrose School District, and some sort of agreement would be necessary. The experience of such inter-agency deals is that they can be complicated and lengthy.
Cherry Park has some of the advantages of Holladay Park East: No existing uses, grass surface, part of a fence in place. It is adjacent to residences and a school, hence a potential for conflict, and there is a lack of parking.
Parklane Park consists of a small developed park and 20 acres of undeveloped formerly industrial land recently added. This area is therefor a “blank canvas” into which a dog park could be fitted. It would require the most work: provision of parking, lighting, water and vegetation, as well as fencing, to be adequate. It also has the greatest neighborhood opposition: the Centennial Neighborhood Association opposes the designation for a variety of reasons. These include both traditional considerations associated with dog areas - safety, droppings, etc.- plus the fact that part of a new park so recently given to the community would now be taken away and given to a special interest group, before a promised master plan process can take place. The Off-Leash Committee recommends that the park be considered, but within the concept of a master-plan process.
As is the case in other areas, no East Portland neighborhood wanted their park to be the only off-leash site for the area, for fear it would suffer the fate of Gabriel Park and be overwhelmed.
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