Fence plan for Minnehaha Off-leash Dog Park would cut off most of the beach

Contrary to popular use, the actual area of the dog park is contained to a 6.6-acre triangular chunk in the southeast corner of the total area where park users currently let their dogs roam off-leash. The National Park Service owns land along the river, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs owns adjacent land to the west and the Minnesota Historical Society owns the land to the south.

Those other landowners have asked the Park Board to erect a fence clearly defining the boundaries between their land and Minneapolis parkland, with the National Park Service offering a federal grant to fund the project, said Park Board project manager Carol HejlStone. That fence would cut off the dog park’s access to the river for all but a small stretch of beach, and reduce off-leash dog access to some woods, too. Knowing this would upset members of the public, the Park Board proposed expanding the formal boundaries of the dog park to just under 17 acres of Minnehaha Regional Park land over which it does have jurisdiction.

“We understand that that dog park users would be upset with the addition of a fence, and so what we were wanting to do is formalize the rest of the MPRB-owned area as off-leash space, which is how it’s been used through time,” said HejlStone. “But we are intending to cut off access to land that is not owned and maintained by MPRB because those landowners don’t want off-leash dogs on their property.”

In short, while the dog park’s acreage will be legally expanded from 6.6 to 17, the total area where off-leash dogs have played for more than 35 years will be diminished in practice.

A Change.org petition to “Save Minnehaha Dog Park” is quickly gaining steam, with more than 800 signatures gathered in four days.

“For 30-plus years people have had access to this and the beach, and we’re talking generations of dog owners and dogs,” said petition organizer Michelle Garens. “It feels really not very transparent, like they were kind of doing the bare minimum of posting, and it wasn’t really clear what was being given up. … We really haven’t heard from those landowners or had an opportunity to express our point of view.”