Delhi dog park site doesn’t sit nice with neighbours
Plan to put place for pooches near the town’s arena got tongues wagging about traffic, noise
It took a few tries, but a service club looking to create Delhi’s first dog park now thinks it has found the right location.
Some residents had a bone to pick with the Kin Club of Delhi’s original plan to put the fenced-in dog park on a patch of municipally owned parkland between the Delhi arena and Big Creek.
Norfolk County staff liked that spot since it was close to a walking trail and the large arena parking lot.
But the news “created quite the little uproar in Delhi,” Kin Club president Brent Stefan told council on Tuesday, with residents worried about noise, increased traffic and street parking, and poor drainage at the arena site.
With help from county staff, the Kin Club pivoted to an industrial area overgrown with brush south of Argyle Avenue, behind a countyowned bulk water filling station.
“It’s just sitting there, so we’re thinking let’s make this into a green space,” Stefan said.
The new dog park would be bordered by a walking trail, a former landfill and industrial land.
“So there shouldn’t be any noise complaints,” Stefan said.
Council heard several subdivisions have gone up near Argyle Avenue within the past decade, bringing dog owners closer to the new proposed park site.
The dog park would go at the south end of the lot, leaving room for a skate park and multi-purpose courts at the other end, Stefan said.
“We can utilize this land appropriately and bring in a park that Delhi is desperately needing and has been asking for,” he told councillors.
“There’s a ton more opportunities that we can do with this land in the future.”
Stefan also asked council to consider turning an adjacent strip of land that the county’s roads department currently uses for dumping snow and parking snowplows into a parking lot for the dog park.
The original dog park would have cost about $28,000 to install, with the county and the service club splitting the cost down the middle.
Bill Cridland, Norfolk’s general manager of community services, told The Spectator the county’s financial commitment remains at $14,000, and any extra costs for the new site will be covered by the Kin Club.
Stefan said the club has some money in hand and would seek grants for the rest.
Cridland called the new location “a good news story” for residents and said work on the park could be completed this year, pending final approval from council.