What about a dog park on the vacant lot on 29th Street & 10th Avenue?

Since this block association was initiated in late January, we have garnered steady and active interest from dog walkers (Smokers, dog walkers, and going digital — High Line 28 Block Association). That is either because dog walkers are more social and civically oriented than the rest of you, or because I posted 100 or so flyers around on light polls and sign posts where dogs like to stop.

Anyway I got coffee last weekend with a block resident named Alice and her Dalmation named Macchia. She floated the idea of turning the vacant lot on the southwest corner of 10th Avenue and 29th Street into a dog park. I thought it was a cool idea, and so in the last few days I did a little digging into property data maintained by NYC to try find out who the owner is. I believe I found him, and it looks like in another era—before the building I’m currently sitting in was even constructed—he intended to build a residential building and diner on the lot (The Filiberto Building - Janko Rasic Architects).

I’m going to reach out to him shortly to try to establish a connection and gauge his temperature on a dog park, even on a non-permanent basis. Let me be clear here: this initiative is probably going to fail and nothing will come of it. But that has been and always will be a terrible reason for not doing something, and one thing I know for certain is that a little relentlessness and shamelessness can, sometimes, go a long way. Also, even though I don’t have a dog, I find watching dogs chase each other around in a park to be oddly mellowing.

Posts you missed this week:

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Important update on the dog park idea.

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Losing perspective and the bylaws.