San Francisco's dogs have a new place to do their business this week, as city officials yesterday opened a brand new play area complete with fences and artificial turf. Bay City News reports that the doggie park is an addition to Lafayette Park, and is one of the few public parks in SF specifically catered toward canines that features all-synthetic grass.
The price tag? $305,000.
In addition to the not-grass, that money went to purchase a new gate and fence.
"Lafayette Dog Park is now a state-of-the-art dog play area that won't have to be closed during the winter," explained Rec & Park general manager Phil Ginsburg in a statement picked up by San Francisco Patch. "We now have a thousand hours of extra yearly play that wasn't available before."
Supervisor Mark Farrell was on hand for the ceremonial ribbon cutting, and he lauded the neighborhood community group that helped push for the renovations. "This project dramatically improves dog facilities for our residents and families," Bay City News reports Farrell as saying. "This project would not have been possible without the SF Rec and Park and the Friends of Lafayette Park. I am grateful for all of their efforts and commitments to providing more access and facilities for dogs and their owners."
The artificial turf is intended to allow for year-round doggie play (it won't get sloppy in those rainy winter months), and requires less water to maintain than traditional grass. This, of course, is not the first use of artificial turf in San Francisco. The Beach Chalet soccer fields actually elicited protest when it was first learned that they would be replaced with fake grass. Those fields opened in December of last year, despite the protest.
Artificial grass or no, we're sure the dogs of Pac Heights will be happy to have a new place to chase balls and sniff butts.
This post has been updated to reflect that the new Lafayette Dog Park is not the only park to feature all-synthetic turf as originally reported by Bay City News — the SoMa West Dog Park does as well.
