Dog park taking shape

Now that many of the bureaucratic and financial roadblocks have been cleared, the end is in sight for local county and civic leaders working to bring a dog park to fruition by the spring of 2010.

“We’ve made progress, but we’re still not through,” Kinston-Lenoir County Recreation director Bill Ellis said Monday.

Ellis, working with the local Rotary Clubs and the Down East Hunting Retriever Club, said during the spring of 2008 that he hoped to open the park — built on the site of a 32-acre former junkyard — by that fall.

But organizers ran into multiple hurdles, among them the delay of the Adkin Branch stream restoration, which meant they could not use dirt excavated in that project to cover the dog park ground.

There were also delays in obtaining an erosion control permit from the state, which would allow for the spreading of dirt and removal of broken glass from the site.

That permit has since been obtained, though, and workers have graded the soil, planted grass and put in trees and shrubs, changing the look of the park.

About $35,000 had been raised through the county, Rotary Club and Retriever Club as of last spring.

Ellis said Monday that various groups are seeking more money for the dog park, such as a $10,000 Rotary District grant to match $10,000 raised by the four Rotary Clubs in Lenoir County. The city’s Public Services Department is also working to raise $1,500 to put in plants at the entranceway off N.C. 11 South.

He and the Rotary Clubs also plan to pull groups of volunteers and various civic groups together this winter for a number of fundraisers and community work days to install fencing and finish landscaping.

Public interest in the park has grown in recent months; Ellis said he sees about 10 to 15 people there each day.

“Anytime you go out there you normally see one or two people. When it gets open and fenced in, I think you’ll see a whole lot more,” he said.

Josh Barnett of Dover was riding around Kinston on Monday with his sister Amy and twin brother John — plus their dog Sassy — looking for something to do when they passed by the dog park, which they have visited in the past.

“We were just driving around,” he said. (I wanted to) come back here and see what they had done, anything new.”

Barnett and his brother parked their pickup truck at the water’s edge and brought Sassy out to relieve herself and walk.

“It’s good and quiet,” he said. “Once they finish it up, it’s going to be a lot nicer.”

Lisa Boorland of Kinston said she visits the dog park several times a week with her three children and two dogs, Macy and Amber.

“It’s really improved in the last few months,” she said.

Her daughter Alex, 13, held the dogs’ leashes while the girl’s 5 and 7-year-old brothers Briant and Gavin tossed a tennis ball to the dogs and wrestled with each other in the grass.

Boorland said the park is a great place to see wildlife and for the dogs and kids to burn off energy.

“We come here to exercise them,” she said of her sons.

David Anderson can be reached at 252-559-1077 or danderson@freedomenc.com.