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Dog park designs unleashed next week

City residents are invited to come out next week and take a sniff of several proposed designs for a future off-leash dog park on Levasseur Road. Three designs will be unleashed at an open house Wednesday night, between 5 and 8 p.m.

City residents are invited to come out next week and take a sniff of several proposed designs for a future off-leash dog park on Levasseur Road.

Three designs will be unleashed at an open house Wednesday night, between 5 and 8 p.m. at Sir George Simpson School. The designs propose a host of ideas for what the new park could look like.

The major design elements will be common among all three designs, south of Levasseur between Hudson Road and 170th Street in a utility corridor.

All of the designs include a 20-stall parking lot, benches and permanent garbage containers.

The variation is in how the area will be fenced in. One design envisions a chain link fence, another would have a post and rail fence and a dog agility area and a third envisions using trees and shrubs to border the site.

John Younie, city manager of major projects and parks planning, said the designs aren't envisioned as all or nothing.

“We certainly will look at blending them depending on the comments we receive,” he said. “The intent of the open house is to hear from people. Do they like any of them? None of them? A combination?”

The location is one of two proposed off-leash parks in the city with the other potentially set for an area in Lacombe Lake Park. That area was initially set to be the first dog park in the city, but posed more design challenges.

The city has 7,000 dog licences — one for every eight people — and council directed several years ago that creating a park should be a priority.

Younie said the cost of the dog park could change depending what people want to see in the park. The three options range from $140,000 for option 1 to $150,000 for option 3 and $190,000 for option 2.

Younie said he has already heard form some residents who don't want to see the project there at all and council will have those viewpoints when they make the final call.

“We are going to take all the comments we hear — online, faxed in, at the open house — and put them in our report to council. Ultimately it is up to council to decide.”

Younie said city administration hopes to have a recommended design to send back to council sometime in late March. If approved, construction will go ahead later this year.

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