Now that the overgrown greenery is taken care of, we’ve got some work to do!
On Saturday, August 22, 2015 at 11am we will be cleaning up the park by pulling weeds, trimming back bushes, assembling a new shed, and cleaning existing equipment. We are also working with Casey Trees to potentially organize a tree planting!
We would like to take this opportunity to show our community how much we appreciate the support so we will have refreshing drinks and snacks to keep you going!
If you are able to help this Saturday, leave us a comment or RSVP on our Facebook event page. If you are a park supporter but cannot help with any of the clean-up, we still want to see you! Come by and enjoy some of the refreshments as our thanks for your support.
We look forward to seeing you Saturday!
P.S. Pups are absolutely welcome but be cautious if your k9 is afraid of loud equipment!
Thanks to the generous support of our community members we are able to have our park surface de-compacted and to add several tons of new gravel. This will help tremendously with the draining and the dust that we have been having issues with.
As a result, the park will be out of commission on Tuesday from 8am to 3pm while the team works on the surface. We want to thank our community for the fiscal support that allows us to make this happen and thank Turf Center and Lawn for their continued assistance in affordable park maintenance.
P.S. View our post/Facebook event page for the Community Appreciation and Clean-up day on Saturday August 22nd 11am.
Friends of the park,
One of our responsibilities, as the board, is to make sure the park is locked at night and opened in the morning. One of our duties, as community members, is to support the resources that we utilize. To that end we depend heavily on our base of volunteers to help us care for the park. Unfortunately, we have a limited number of gate volunteers, none of which are available to take care of opening/closing this weekend. If we do not get a volunteer the park will remain closed until the next volunteer cycle (Sunday morning).
As a volunteer all you have to do is: meet the previous week’s volunteer on Sunday morning at 8am to collect the keys; close the park at dark that Sunday through Saturday; and open that Saturday at 8. This is only a week long commitment that you can even share with a friend and the more volunteers we have the less often we have to call upon you to assist.
We definitely understand that people are very busy and it can be difficult to make the time but we implore you to help us out if you can spare the 20 minutes for a week.
Thanks for listening and if you are able to volunteer you can send us an email to info@newarkstreetdogpark.org
Sincerely,
Newark Street Park k9 Friends
Community,
The NSDPK9F board has been working hard to maintain, and even improve, the state of our park. It is an unfortunate reality that D.C. does not have the manpower to adequately maintain every inch of their park land. As such it is important for the community to play a role in the upkeep. To that end we have some plans in mind on which we would like your input.
The black storage box has lost its legs so we will be removing it within the coming month and installing a new shed in the East entrance for all of our tools (and secret stash of tennis balls). This is possible due to the generous donations from our wonderful community!
The board, Casey Trees, and their DC DPR contact are planning a tree planting within the coming month that will eventually increase the canopy in the area. The additional trees will be planted along the perimeter of the exterior of the park. One tree may actually be IN the park and we would like your input on that. Good idea? Bad idea?
In place of the black box that we love to sit on we would like to install a new bench (which would be right next to the tree). This is an item we will need to seek sponsorship and or have a fundraiser for.
Please take some time to weigh in on these upgrades and feel free to suggest anything additional. We are still waiting on our contractor to take care of the surfacing issue but trust that it is one of our priorities.
Thanks for your support!
Community,
The board has received several complaints about children playing unsupervised, and sometimes ineffectively supervised, in the dog park. The presence of children is certainly not offensive and, so long as they are supervised, there is no D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation regulation (Reference #17 in the Regulations listed here) that forbids them from using the dog park.
The concern is that the dog park is not a safe place for small children for a number of reasons the first of which is how unsanitary it is for them to play in the gravel. Additionally, dogs tend to enjoy playing with things that are at their eye level or similar size. As a result, people who bring their dog to the park may feel obligated to isolate their pup or leave so that there are no accidents.
What are your thoughts and or suggestions on this issue?
We are looking for gate volunteers to help close the park in the evening. We have a particular need this coming week. Per our agreement with the city, if we don’t have volunteers to close the park then it will stay closed until further notice! 😦
If you are interested in helping out, please send an email to info@newarkstreetdogpark.org
