Park Hill, dog park plans center of commissioner meeting
Residents of Sunnyslope Village received a personal invitation
to attend a March 31 Hollister Parks and Recreation Commission
meeting to voice their opinions about the possibility of turning
Frank Klauer Park into a formal dog park.
Park Hill, dog park plans center of commissioner meeting
Residents of Sunnyslope Village received a personal invitation to attend a March 31 Hollister Parks and Recreation Commission meeting to voice their opinions about the possibility of turning Frank Klauer Park into a formal dog park.
Clay Lee, the community services director, sent out 450 letters to residents in the neighborhood surrounding the park to tell them about the meeting and to offer ways they could share their comments by mail, e-mail or phone.
“We had about 30 people [show up at the meeting], which is fairly decent,” Lee said. “We had somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 responses.”
By Lee’s estimate, the written or e-mailed responses were two-to-one in favor of converting part of Frank Klauer Park into an official dog park. A third of those who attended the meeting were residents, and Lee again said the responses seemed to be two-to-one in favor of the park.
“There was good interaction,” Lee said. “You could tell not all were in support, but it was not antagonistic.”
For years, dog owners have been using the fenced retention basin in the neighborhood park as an unofficial off-leash dog park. Most dog parks in other cities have a double-gate system so the dogs cannot accidentally escape. Other parks have such features as a separate area for small and large dogs; water features; communal water bowls; and bag dispensers to clean up after the dogs.
According to Lee, the concerns voiced by residents include limiting the use of the retention basin for other activities such as playing ball, the amount of traffic brought to the area by the use as a dog park, limited parking and hours of operation.
Tammy Ballew, a member of the Hollister Dog Owners Group, and other owners prompted city staff to consider a location for a more permanent dog park. She and other members attended the March 31 meeting.
“For the most part, I think people believe it is a good location for a park,” said Ballew, who said it was a city engineer who first suggested converting Klauer Park to a permanent dog park. “The number one issue is parking.”
Lee stressed that no decision was made at the recent meeting and city staff are considering some other locations.
“We’re not just looking at Klauer Park,” he said. “We had a discussion about the park out at the airport. And in the master plan going in at Park Hill, there is a dog park in the inception.”
The dog park proposed at Park Hill is on the small side at 10,000 square feet.
“We definitely like the idea of Park Hill,” Ballew said. “It is going to be a relatively small area. We don’t have any objection with multiple parks.”
The other location under consideration is a park near the Hollister Municipal Airport at Fallon and San Felipe roads.
“There is a park there that is 1.75 acres and it gets very little use,” Lee said. “With improvements for parking, we estimate we might be able to get 50 to 60 parking spots.”
Once a location is identified, HDOG plans to raise money to build and maintain the park. Some of the ideas include having residents sponsor a tree or a bench, or maybe even making tiles with their dogs’ paw print on it to be used in some of the water features.
“We will do monthly cleanup days and the city would still do trash pick-up,” she said. “We have been doing some fundraisers. We did the street fair and we have the Dogs Days event coming up.”
Lee and Ballew both stressed that having an official location would allow them to set up rules for users.
“We can set hours of operations,” Lee said. “Some of the dog owners are getting there very early and not just letting dogs run. They are training, blowing whistles.”
At the same meeting, commissioners received feedback on the Park Hill Master Plan from a community workshop held March 24. Alison Hobbs prepared notes from the meeting.
Attendants of the meeting voted on two options for the park. The first is to relocate a large picnic building and move it next to a proposed parking lot, and then add an amphitheater in its place. It would be nestled into the grade and could hold 250 to 300 people. Those at the workshop voted in favor of this option.
The second option was to replace plans for a dog park with an amphitheater. Community members voted against that idea.
Other comments included a desire to incorporate interactive sculptures into the site or create character benches. Some were concerned about traffic around the park. Another suggestion was to put up interpretative signage about the seismic activity in the area, or to connect schools with United States Geological Society staff while they conduct routine checks at Park Hill.
SSA Landscape Architects, the consultants working on the master plan, will develop a phase and implementation plan, along with an estimate of costs. They will work with city staff to review grant possibilities.
Discussion of the dog park will be continued at the April commission meeting.
“Within the next couple meetings, we would like to make a recommendation on whether we move forward,” Lee said, “whether it be at Klauer Park or some other place.”
