Committee to consider dog park in Medfield

Baltimore City's Buena Vista Park could someday be home to a dog park.

The Medfield Community Association is forming a "discovery committee" to conduct a feasibility study for a dog-dedicated area of the park, located at Buena Vista Avenue and 40th Street in Hampden, on the borders of Medfield and Woodberry, according to Rich Kaminski, zoning chairman for the Medfield association.

The Hampden Community Council on June 27 approved the formation of a committee.

"This is most certainly good news to dog owners in Hampden, Medfield and Woodberry," Kaminski said. He said the dog park would be within walking distance of the three communities.

Beyond the question of feasibility, "the communities and supporters will also need to decide whether they want an off-leash area or a fenced dog park," said Gary Sever, president of the Medfield association.

Not only residents in the Hampden-Medfield-Woodberry are excited.

"I think it's really great," said Kara Kunst, of Remington, one of several dog owners in the area who has been trying to get the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks to okay an unfenced dog area, with off-leash hours, in the Wyman Park Dell. A 2006 master plan for the dell calls for a dog park.

Kunst said any such plan needs the support of the communities that would be affected by it.

"This has to be community-driven," said Kunst, the owner of Molly, a 3-year-old labradoodle.

The discovery committee would report to the Hampden Community Council's zoning committee, with input from the Medfield and Woodberry communities, Kaminski said.

One dog park is already planned in the north Baltimore area. Baltimore County, which has taken over from the city as the operator of Robert E. Lee Park, near Mount Washington, plans to spend $6 million renovating the 453-acre park, including setting up a secure dog park, which has long been a bone of contention among Robert E. Lee park goers.

Dog parks have been hotly debated in recent years. In 2009, Kunst was one of several north Baltimore dog owners who attended a city meeting in Fells Point about the idea of starting a dog park inPatterson Park.

The City Council earlier that year passed a bill authorizing the recreation and parks department to establish off-leash hours and/or fenced runs in city parks. That followed complaints about stiff fines for lettingdogs run off-leash in city parks such as Stony Run Creek, where a couple had been fined $450, partly for letting their three Dalmations run without a leash.

But many in the audience at the meeting downtown opposed off-leash hours and allowing owners to police their dogs. Some said their dogs — or children — had been attacked by other dogs.

"Dog bites will occur, and if they occur in off-leash areas, you will be sued," Rebecca Smith, founder of the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance, said at the time.

"Dog parks create heat the moment (the words) leave my lips," Wanda Durden, then-director of recreation and parks, said at the time.

Recreation and parks officials would have to hold public meetings about the idea of a dog park in Buena Vista Park, if the idea gets that far.

"And they work pretty hard to make everyone happy," said Sever, the Medfield association president, who also sits on a recreation and parks citizens' advisory board.

The quest for a dog park shines a spotlight on Buena Vista Park for the second time this year. In April, Denise Johnson-Caldwell, a city planner for recreation and parks, told the Hampden Community Council that the city plans to spend $110,000 to upgrade the park's playground for the first time in 20 years.

The proposed dog park would be located in an area behind the playground, Kaminski said.

Johnson-Caldwell said last week that a dog park would not interfere with plans to revamp the playground.

Kaminski told the audience at the Hampden Community Council meeting that the process of analyzing the feasibility, costs and timeline for a dog park could take as long as two years.

"That's fine with me," he said. "What I need now is your support" for a study.