Cedar Park is digging through ideas for a dog park in Brushy Creek Lake Park, starting with discussions by the city’s Community Development Corp. Type B Board, commonly known as the 4B Board.

The city has one dog park—Cedar Bark Park—at Veterans Memorial Park off New Hope Drive.

Board members discussed potential locations for a new dog park during its June 13 meeting and approved a feasibility study for Brushy Creek Lake Park at its July 11 meeting.

The board, which works on programming and expenditure of funds related to community development projects, contracted with engineering and architecture consulting firm Halff Associates to evaluate where the city could use a second dog park, and project manager Brandon Hay went over the results of the feasibility study.

“We went back to the textbooks and made sure we understood all the key elements and the things that we needed to consider when we approached this process,” Hay said.

Some of the components considered were amenities, a variety of seating options, parking and surfacing, such as mulch or gravel.

“The dog parks really do create a sense of community,” Hay said. “There’s a lot of people who come there every day and that’s their post work social gathering.”

Halff Associates developed a list of standards, such as the space must:

• be a minimum of 5 acres
• be at least 3 miles away from the existing dog park; and
• be near a high-density residential community.

Kimberly Reese, assistant to the city manager, said staff recommended Brushy Creek Lake Park.

“For one, this is the less expensive option because it has some of those existing fixtures that we would need, like parking,” Reese said. “Additionally, staff feel that this would have less impact on surrounding neighborhoods and just feel overall this is probably the preferred location.”

The budget for the project, including the feasibility study, is $265,000. The board budgeted $150,000 for fiscal year 2015-16 to go toward construction and design of the park.

Designs for the park include a splash pad, an optional amenity board members were in favor of in June.

“[Cedar Bark Park] is just used constantly, and I think this would help alleviate some of the usage that the current one has. I’m looking forward to it,” said Board Vice President Bob Lemon.

Staff will now move forward with public notice and setting public hearing dates on the project.