Press

March 8th, 2006, Five Cities Times Press Recorder

Dog owners pushing for off-leash park

Cities say no sites currently available

When Five Cities dog owners could no longer use Costa Bella Park in Grover Beach as a dog park, they lost more than a place to let their dogs run freely.

Five Cities residents had been using the landscaped retention basin as an unofficial off-leash park for years until last December, when the city stepped in and stopped the activity. Not only did the dog owners lose a spot where their four-legged canine companions could run free and play, but they also lost a place to socialize. And without a place to run and visit, both the dogs and their humans are feeling pretty sad.

“(Dog parks) breed a social environment; we looked forward to going there,” said Arroyo Grande resident Cynthia Eklund. “(A dog park) is the only kind of park that you can go to and talk to other people.”

Eklund started using the park about two years ago after she and her husband got a basset hound puppy, Dudley, who visited Costa Bella almost every day. She said she got hooked on the park, as did many other dog owners and their dogs.

“It’s sad,” she said about no longer having access to Costa Bella as an off-leash park. “It was amazing how popular (the park) was." Others who used the park echo her sentiments. “That was probably the most used park in Grover Beach,” added Don Boggess, who also took his dog to Costa Bella about five times a week. “It’s just terrible (we can’t use it anymore).”

But instead of rolling over and playing dead, Eklund and Boggess, along with other former Costa Bella users, are forming a nonprofit group — Five Cities Dog Park Association — to find a site for a new off-leash park. “It’s really starting to gather momentum,” Boggess said about the group, which plans to incorporate this week.

Members of the group recently made informal presentations to the Pismo Beach, Grover Beach and Arroyo Grande city councils about the idea of an off-leash park in the Five Cities area. Eklund said the group also wants the cities to re-evaluate how parks are used and look at the possibility of allowing an off-leash area at a city park. It’s illegal to allow a dog to be off leash at any city park within the Five Cities area, and violators can be cited.

Dan Hernandez, Arroyo Grande Parks, Recreation and Facilities Department director, said the city doesn’t have space in its parks, which are all fully developed, to allow for an off-leash area.

“It could be a possibility in the future ... ,” Hernandez said.

Two parks in Pismo Beach — Chumash Park and Price Anniversary House Historic Park — aren’t fully developed, but the master plans don’t include off-leash areas. Carolyn Johnson, a Pismo planner, said to get an off-leash area incorporated into either park’s master plan, public hearings would have to be held and the plan amended.