At the July 21 Grapevine Parks and Recreation meeting, a concept plan for the city’s first dog park is expected to be approved.

In May, Parks and Recreation staff held a public meeting where they announced two dog parks would be built: one at Big Bear Creek Park and another at McPherson Park.

However, the Parks and Recreation Department learned in early July that in order to build a dog park at the McPherson Park location they must have approval from the U.S. Army Corps. of Engineers.

Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Mitchell said going into the site selection process, staff told Pacheco Koch, who is developing the project, to evaluate potential sites for north and south dog park locations.

“We basically said look at every piece of park land we have—we have almost 1,600 acres of park land—and tell us what makes the most sense and what fits. North Grapevine was a little bit easier because there was more choices, but South Grapevine was more difficult because essentially there were only two parks to pick from, which were Parr Park and Big Bear Creek Park.”

Since the announcement, disc golfers, who learned they would be losing some disc golf holes at Big Bear Creek Park, banded together to express their disappointment in the site selection.

One of those disc golfers is Grapevine resident Jordan Carter, who is a part of a disc golf club that has members from surrounding area cities.

“It’s very disappointing,” he said. “We didn’t receive any notice about the course possibly becoming a dog park,” he said.

Carter and his fellow disc golfers started an online petition.

However, he said he learned from the city that it was too late for a petition because the dog parks had already been approved.

Going forward, Carter said he hopes that the disc golf club can be involved in the redesign.

“There’s nothing we can do to save it,” he said. “Hopefully, we can at least have input on the redesign because we want the course to still be functional.”

Carter said his club is also willing to work with the city to see if another disc golf course could be built.

“We are willing to do what it takes—if that means putting up money or taking care of the park—we would do almost anything,” he said.

Mitchell said city staff will hold a public, on-site meeting to discuss the concept plan of the dog park and answer any questions the public might have. The meeting will be held on Aug. 1 at 7 p.m. at Big Bear Creek Park.

Construction is expected to start in spring 2017 with the opening of the dog parks to follow that summer.