Metro Denver’s largest dog park faces potential downsizing, sparking outcry
Metro Denver’s largest off-leash canine park might be minimize to lower than a tenth of its measurement as Westminster metropolis officers search for methods to cut back the pressure of one million visits a yr on protected prairie land.
The prospect of drawing down the off-leash space at Westminster Hills Open House from 420 acres — occupying practically half the property footprint — to about 32 acres has canine homeowners howling in protest. A number of stated they relish the wind-whipped prairie park, positioned northwest of Simms Road and West one hundredth Avenue, which comes full with a surprising view of the Rocky Mountains and, to the south, Standley Lake.
“I feel it’s unhappy,” stated Rachel Robertson, who visits from her house in Denver a few occasions every week to let her golden doodle, Naya, stretch her legs. “These sorts of canine parks are an effective way for them to get their power out.”
At a neighborhood assembly Wednesday evening, Westminster metropolis officers will lay out a number of potential choices to handle the property, from leaving it as it’s to severely curbing off-leash use. A call continues to be months away.
However the metropolis already has acquired greater than 1,000 emails about Westminster Hills, and a Change.org petition in search of to maintain the property “fully off-leash” has garnered greater than 5,400 signatures.
“It’s enormous,” Westminster Metropolis Councilwoman Kristine Eire, who took workplace in December, stated in regards to the response. “Most of them are upset.”
Wednesday’s assembly, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at Metropolis Park Recreation Middle, 10455 Sheridan Blvd., is anticipated to be nicely attended.
This week town started taking purposes to seat a neighborhood advisory group of 9 to 11 members whose job it is going to be to winnow down the choices that will likely be unveiled at Wednesday’s assembly. These options weren’t publicly accessible Tuesday.
The Metropolis Council is anticipated to select a ultimate plan of action someday this summer time.
Retaining open area match for wildlife
The open area serves as shortgrass prairie habitat for the black-tailed prairie canine, bald eagle, western burrowing owl and northern leopard frog. Making an attempt to maintain it match for wildlife is a tricky slog within the face of a every day onslaught of canines, stated metropolis spokesman Andy Le.
Canines flush out ground-dwelling birds, and their nitrogen-rich feces promote “the expansion of nonnative crops on the expense of native crops,” in response to a metropolis research launched late final yr.
Town hauled 350,000 kilos of canine waste out of the open area property in 2023, Le stated. A few of the canine poop by no means made it to a trash can.
When town started assembling Westminster Hills Open House in phases, with the primary land buy made in 1988, officers say, it was by no means meant to be a canine park. It now spans 1,000-plus acres.
The property turned canine-friendly in 2000 when town launched a one-year pilot for an off-leash space on 27 acres. Town expanded the off-leash zone to all the open area property in 2008, earlier than dialing it again to simply over 400 acres the following yr in response to quite a few coyote-dog encounters.
“It’s an open area that has been used informally as a canine park — however it isn’t a canine park,” Le stated. “We would like everyone to benefit from the open area however we now have to give you a algorithm that everybody can comply with that stops the degradation of the land.”
However Eire stated the problem now going through Westminster’s land administration officers is that “it’s laborious to remove one thing that individuals have used for that lengthy.”
This isn’t the primary time a Entrance Vary neighborhood has rallied round the way forward for an off-leash canine facility. In 2017, a whole lot of residents in and round Evergreen fought for months to save lots of the favored 107-acre Elk Meadow Park for untethered canines.
Jefferson County Open House officers floated a proposal to restrict free canines to an 8-acre part of the park however in the end determined to shut all the park to off-leash use. Elk Meadow noticed as many as 400 folks and their canines every day, inflicting parking complications and security hazards for these crossing the highway from the parking zone to the park.
Matt Robbins, a spokesman for Jefferson County’s Parks and Conservation Division, stated the challenges for land managers had been the steep topography of the park and spiking ranges of E. coli, attributable to canine feces measured within the a whole lot of kilos, in an intermittent stream that ran via the property.
However “terrible” is how Betsy Wealthy, an Evergreen resident, described the park’s closure. She led the struggle seven years in the past to maintain Elk Meadow open, and he or she nonetheless disputes the extent of contamination the county cited for its shutdown.
“Not solely was it a spot to train your canine, it was the middle of the neighborhood for thus many people,” she stated. “These had been who your mates had been.”
Canine homeowners counsel options
Wealthy urged Westminster residents to “struggle, struggle and struggle” any try to considerably scale back off-leash acreage at Westminster Hills Open House.
“Hopefully they’ll have higher luck than we did,” she stated.
Westminster would possibly take a cue on how one can transfer ahead from two different giant off-leash parks within the Denver space. Chatfield State Park has a 69-acre off-leash canine park and Cherry Creek State Park has 107 acres for unleashed canines. Each cost a $3 every day payment or $25 for an annual cross, and customers are restricted to a few canines per go to.
Westminster resident Bob Cantrell was strolling his two miniature Australian shepherds, Jack and Jill, in the course of the lunch hour Monday. He makes use of Westminster Hills each day, he stated, and will see a middle-of-the-road strategy with the property — with town closing half of the present off-leash space to free canines for a yr to let it regenerate, then switching to the opposite half the next yr.
Making an attempt to stuff everybody and their canines onto a tiny parcel can be a foul concept, Cantrell stated: “Are you able to think about how it will be on 40 acres?”
Such a scale-back additionally wouldn’t work for Drew Landis of Arvada, who enjoys taking completely different routes on the community of trails within the park to maintain issues contemporary and fascinating — for him and his canine.
He’s been coming to Westminster Hills a number of occasions every week for seven years. But when the off-leash space was diminished by 90% or extra?
“I’d in all probability cease coming,” he stated.
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