Of course, if you want to use the dog park, your human must register in person at the Parks and Recreation Office at 3000 Parkway Blvd Allentown PA 18104 Monday through Friday from 8:00am to 4:00pm. Proof of residency via photo ID, proof of valid dog licenses and vaccinations and completed application are required in order to receive a dog park key fob.
Construction on the dog park, which cost $125,000, was paid for by grants from the Friends of the Allentown Parks and the Pet Safe's Bark for Your Park program, as well as about $90,000 from Allentown.
A dog park in Nazareth cost $0. Another in Easton cost $12,000,of which $5,000 was donated.
24 comments:
Dog parks work best when they are smaller and neighborhood oriented with a sense of community ownership.
Big dog parks like the Allentown one are a study in how not to have a safe and secure facility for people and their beloved dogs.
Love your dog?
Stay away from these types of facilities.
Photo id and proof of residency? Hope they never set up voting booths there.
Bernie:
I want to make sure I am understanding this. Are you saying that Allentown, the city where the Mayor just raised its taxes 27%, spent $90,000 tax payer dollars on a dog park?!! If So, O'Connell should be impeached and certainly have the good judgment not to run for election!
The city did this last year.
The City residents have needed a dog park for years.The Mayor made this reality.I don't believe its just to require proof of city residency and proof of vaccination to use the tax-payers funded facility
A left over mega-park plan from Greg Weitzel’s glorious reign as the Prince of the Parks under Mayor Fed Ed Pawlowski.
Weitzel is the genius who brought Allentown the one-of-everything-in-the-catalogue playground shoe horned into Cedar Beach, the “park that is being loved to death”according to an extensive Trexler Trust report that the city roundly ignored.
All the plastic fantastic equipment was purchased from a business near Weitzel’s small home town outside of Lancaster.
It’s good to have friends.
Some will no doubt recall the plan for a palatial Pawlowski Water Park in the adjoining park grounds.
(Think I’m making this up?
You can google it.)
Weitzel held several of his famous “Weitzel Community Meeting” where citizens gave thoughtful input that was dutifully recorded then unceremoniously disregarded, as was his M.O.
All this was validated by one of Weitzel’s famous “push polls” designed in collaboration with Weitzel’s Penn State’’s Graduate Department of Recreation pals.
People thought that Parks Director Weitzel was perhaps not the smartest fella around, but he won some big professional awards from his colleagues in the parks and recreation field (no other municipality in the Commonwealth was spending that kind of big bucks on playground equipment in those difficult years) and clearly saw where the Pawlowski Ship of State was heading, packaged up his fabulous achievements in Allentown to secure an even higher paying and more prestigious position in Idaho, just before the FBI came to town.
Weitzel escaped to greener pastures just as the pending, and ongoing, Cedar Beach Pool catastrophe reached critical mass, and it ain’t over yet, kids.
Final analysis: Director Weitzel was a sharp opportunist while the Mayor was...you know that story.
Meanwhile the Dixon St. dog park is a bad idea at the wrong time in a terrible location,
a technical wet land area wholly unsuited for the planned use.
The Parks Department has not had the manpower to empty 55 gallon drums of garbage in the park system on a regular basis along with other neglected routine maintenance in recent years and is managed by a foreman who admitted in open court to having cooperated in bid rigging because the mayor requested that he do so, and yes, he is still on the job in a prominent position.
The Allentown Parks Department has not been able to keep up with the declining parks maintenance for years.
The planned dog park is a bad idea as conceived at this location in this fiscal environment with the current maintenance priorities and deficits.
SNAFU!
One bright spot in Ray’s new administration was the firing of Pawlowski’s Parks Director and the hiring of a person with honesty, integrity and commitment.
The new Director also loves dogs.
Having said that, a large dog park adjacent to Center City Allentown is a generally awful
idea. When the novelty wears off it will rapidly and inevitably fall into the category of a poorly managed and maintained dump not fit for the safety of dogs or their people.
Two years into the next administration it becomes a liability in every regard.
A Center City Allentown dog park-what could possibly go wrong?
Who’s gonna check for current county dog licenses at the park and ask people without them to leave?
The APD has the interest in policing the new facility?
There’s not a hundred current dog licenses in all of Center City.
This misguided dog park has been marketed for years as a “destination dog park”.
Imagine a “destination dog park” in downtown Allentown.
Only in the City Without Limits could this go on.
Yo, Huck Weaver,fact, Pawlowski couldn’t stand dogs and dogs didn’t like him.
Fact.
Like most everything he did it was craven political pandering.
The initial (expensive) design plans for the “Destination Dog Park” were drawn up by a firm connected to Mr. Weitzel’s Penn State pals. This firm never actually set foot on the proposed location.
A lovely house that the city allowed to fall into disrepair was demolished in part by the funding secured for the “Destination Dog Park”.
How can this be true?
Wait!!!
Am I reading this correctly?
One hundred and twenty five thousand dollars?
Robert Trotner probably supported this because he smells like a wet dirty dog. His hygiene is deplorable. He wears the same dirty jeans every day and rarely bathes or brushes his teeth. He has dog breath!
If Allentown had one dollar for every time some innocent pit bull type dog was abused, beaten, neglected, starved, forced into fighting, otherwise exploited or driven to an early death, this ridiculously situated dog park could have generated twice the $125,000.00 amount that is being squandered.
Robert T. is a decent, well meaning, civic minded person. If Allentown had a dozen more people like him it would be a much better place.
Anon @ 4:37 I did not write the prior comment but you clearly have not seen the horrible things Robert T writes about people without a scintilla of knowledge on the subject or taking a moment to learn both sides of an issue. I have read horrible defamatory things he has written about people which were 100% inaccurate. He may not have dog breath but he is neither decent nor well-meaning. He is a nasty vindictive person who enjoys destroying lives from the safety of his mother's basement.
Anon 4:37 If Allentown had a dozen people like Trotner it would smell so bad that no one else could live here! One time, I was 2 rows behind him at an event and I swear he smelled like he soiled himself. People around him had to leave. His hair was so greasy it looked like it hadn't been washed for a week.
Why are these ugly and unfounded comments about Robert Trotner allowed to stand?
This is unconscionable.
If someone puts himself out there, as Trotnet does, he has to expect criticism. Contrary to what MM has written, Trotner was for years a supporter of FedEd. I took him to task, face to face. I have also found him to be one of the dumbest persons I’ve ever encountered. He misreads things and the posts statements that are untrue. Then, days later, he’ll say he was wrong. He has done nothing for the cause of good government. So the comments critical of him will stand.
Cynthia Mota for Mayor
The golden dog shitter there will be a need for a golden thrown cleaner. Will this person have a city pension plan?
Lets also add that the dog park currently has NO shade structures or seating.
How does the city “need” a dog park. The poor humane society down the street from this fenced in square of grass is full of unwanted dogs that go without and live on a concrete slab.
Do you happen to have the stats of how many people use this dog park?
To 11:39am there is no shade but as far as seating there is a flat bench inside the fenced in area.
There is also a lanta bus stop on Dixon st nearby that she shelter around it has been damaged and instead of repairing it they got rid of it altogether.
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