Photo: DogTipper.com
Great story from our favorite Dallas Observer reporter, Eric Nicholson, on the proposed $1 million makeover the White Rock Dog Park is getting.
It’s probably the most popular dog park in all of North Texas, considering that when I’ve taken my Great Pyrenees mix there, I’ve run into folks from Frisco and Murphy. It gets a lot of use, and some days it’s little more than a fenced-in mudhole, so it could definitely use some work. But $1 million worth of work?
Maybe the world is ending, but I’ve finally found something Dallas City Councilman Dwaine Caraway and I can agree on. Caraway, no stranger to colorful language, represents District 4, an underserved area of Southern Dallas.
“I just want to make it a point, we don’t have a dog park, and doggone it, if all these millions of dollars in these dog parks with air conditioned dog houses and all these other things that they got going, then give us something,” Caraway said. “At least put us in a plan for a dog park somewhere.”
Folks in Oak Cliff have been working to bring a dog park to their neighborhood, but roadblock after roadblock has kept organizations such as FIDO Oak Cliff from realizing their dream. Add the existing problem with stray and dumped dogs throughout Southern Dallas and … let’s just say I see what Caraway is getting at. It’s a quality of life issue. Until we really focus resources in underserved areas, Southern Dallas isn’t going to thrive no matter how many great-sounding initiatives Mayor Mike Rawlings launches.
“Our priority has been what? Stray dogs,” Caraway told Unfair Park this morning. “Well goddamn, that’s kinda unfair that we’re fighting stray dogs that we can’t pick up” and Greyson and Allen are suggesting they should pour their cut of bond money into dog parks.
“Our priorities are totally different from what they’re saying,” he says. “We’re already the ones that are under-recognized, for lack of a better word, economically.”
Dog parks are huge selling points in neighborhoods, and the White Rock Lake area has benefited handsomely from having a huge off-leash park in the area. It has permanently etched the neighborhood’s reputation as a dog-friendly area in the minds of all North Texans. If neighborhoods south of the Trinity had park facilities such as these, they’d benefit from that investment, too.
What do you think? Are dog parks amenities that add a significant value to a property’s location? Or are they more of a liability than we think?
