The City of Chestermere is encouraging residents and dog owners to learn about council’s priority dog park project and share their thoughts at an open house.
City administration will be available to hear residents’ thoughts on council’s dog park priority project on Sept. 27 between 5:30 p.m., and 7 p.m., at city hall.
Project Coordinator, and Community Operations of Open Space Planning for the city, Carly Davies presented a project update to council on Sept. 13.
Originally, city administration presented five acres with three dog parks including parking.
Through community engagement, Davies and city administration recommended the dog park location change to the corner of Windermere Drive and Paradise Road, under the Altalink power lines.
“Our new design is a total of over five acres in one location, including two sections, and parking,” Davies said. “Even though there aren’t three different locations, we feel that we are making positive advances.”
The dog park will include on-site parking, fencing, closing gates, benches, and garbage bins, the City of Chestermere website said.
“In this design, we will have a larger area for all dogs, and a smaller caged-off area for training,” Davies said.
In the new design, the north section will be three acres with two one-acre sections and include parking.
“At this point, we feel like we have extensively looked through the rest of Chestermere, and there aren’t many places that we own that would facilitate a site like this,” Davies said. “To the best of our knowledge, we feel like this is the best-suited site, based on what everybody else has said.”
City administration is working with vendors to determine pricing options to ensure project construction can begin in the fall.
“It looks like as long as the vendors come back with information, and we review, construction can happen in October,” Davies said. “We’re on schedule.”
Going forward, city administration is working with developers to discuss potential opportunities to build amenities such as dog parks in new developments.
“We’ve been discussing with developers to include off-leash parks and other opportunities, but a lot of the outline plans are completed,” Davies said. “Council has a lot of priorities, and ensuring dog parks is one of them is on the list for developers to include in their areas.”
