CONWAY — The director of the Conway Parks and Recreation Department will ask the City Council this week to approve a bid to install fencing around property to create a dog park.
The city won $25,000 a year ago in a national online Bark for Your Park PetSafe contest, and the money will be matched with $25,000 from Conway Advertising and Promotion funds to build the dog park, said Steve Ibbotson, director of Conway Parks and Recreation.
The park will be built on almost 4 acres on the south side of the Don Owen Recreation Complex on Lower Ridge Road and will be Conway’s first dog park.
Ibbotson said the council will be asked to approve a bid for approximately $32,000 from Bill’s Fence Co. of Cabot.
If the council approves the bid, “we’ll give [the company] notice to proceed, and they’ll start installing the fence,” Ibbotson said. “We’ve done site work out there, cleaned the site up. We had to remove one tree, but mostly it was spreading dirt and leveling out a couple of spaces.”
Judi Standridge, who spearheaded the online contest to get the project started, said, “I’m
excited about the progress.” She’s been working on the rules for the park.
“I’ve researched them from all over the United States,” she said. “What I do is, I take a
picture of all the signs,” and she keeps them on her computer for reference.
Ibbotson said the group will get input from Shona Osborne, director of the Conway Animal Welfare Unit, on rules that might be specific to Conway.
“”Obviously, if there’s a problem, they’re going to be calling Shona,” he said.
Standridge, a volunteer with the Humane Society of Faulkner County, said a dog park has been discussed for the city for more than a decade.
She is part of a committee formed under the Humane Society of Faulkner County to assist with the dog park.
However, Standridge emphasized that it is not a Humane Society of Faulkner County project.
“We were in charge of the contest; Steve’s in charge of construction,” she said. “We’re just here to help if Steve wants our help.”
Standridge said the dog park won’t have everything under the sun, “because we only got $50,000.”
The contest’s grand prize was $100,000.
Standridge said two of the three dogs parks in Little Rock seem to have a new feature every time she goes to the parks.
Ibbotson said amenities in the Conway Dog Park will include water fountains for pets and their owners that will be ordered from Most Dependable Fountains, as well as benches and dog-waste disposal stations. The park will be divided by a fence to provide separate areas for large and small dogs.
“We made some modifications to our existing water system so we can have the pressure we need at the hydrants,” he said.
The fountains that will be ordered “have bowls for water for the dogs on the lower end and fountains on the top for their human partners.”
“It’s going to have the basics that we need,” Standridge said of the Conway park.
A completion date for the park primarily depends on the weather, Ibbotson said.
“I’d say within the next couple of months, we should be done with it,” he said.
Brianne Wardell, 27, of Conway said she knew the park was coming, but she didn’t know the plan had been finalized.
Wardell was walking her boxer, Bailey, through a parking lot on Salem Road.
“Believe it or not, we go once a week to Little Rock to the dog park. I try to take her every Saturday. There’s nowhere around here to go leash-free,” she said. “It’ll really be nice when we get one here in Conway.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.