No restrictions will be placed, however, on an overarching view of Culver City. A panoramic hilltop perspective that is breathtaking will be accessible to all leg owners.
Although the Dog Park has been open, and busy, for a few weeks, part of the significance of Saturday lies in the project’s extended gestation period.
Since the long, long awaited grazing area has been nine years in the making, an elderly Culver City math expert calculated that it took City Hall something like seven hundred and fifty times as long to create the Dog Park as it took God to create the world.
A Dog Park and a Backyard
City Councilman Alan Corlin has been an enthusiastic advocate of the park throughout the six years he has been in office.
The Councilman offered a Corlinesque explanation as to why the Dog Park’s gestation period was five and a half times longer than it takes a giraffe to be born.
“The City Council of 1997-98 started the ball rolling for a Dog Park,” he said, “but then it got Culver City-ized,” a euphemism for delayed.
“Two things happened. The Council decided it wanted to do something else instead, and people did not really take it seriously.”
Whether the two causes are linked is a matter of speculation.
Opting to build a Skateboard Park may have sounded more appetizing to the City Council.
Changing the subject created a potential distraction for pesky Dog Park advocates, who didn’t lose the thread but they didn’t make booming noise, either.
Meanwhile, when the former City Councilman David Hauptman was mayor, Dog Park activists were offered what Mr. Corlin described as “a sliver of land, about the size of my backyard,” by Hetzler Road, east of the present site.
While one dog did not exactly have to step outside to let the next one in, the pocket-sized space soon was deemed unsatisfactory.
By Mr. Corlin’s recollection, “there was so much resistance. People kind of made light of a dog park.”
Woof, Woof, They Said
Many critics of the concept practiced discretion. But all of the snickering was not muffled.
The increasingly casual cadence and overall sense of urgency of the movement uptcked several years ago when Vicki Daly Redholtz emerged as the new face of the movement.
“She took it to the next level,” Mr. Corlin said.
Ms. Daly Redholtz describes herself as an everyday lover of dogs, not a fanatic, not inclined toward militancy, just someone who thought the Dog Park was a nice idea.
The Friends of the Dog Park was organized. Soon the group attracted committed pet owners tired of measuring the Culver City calendar in dog years.
Nudged by Ms. Daly Redholtz, Friends fanned out across the neighborhoods, inspired a community and raised pivotal funds.
Rather than testing whether the bark of the Friends was louder than their bite,
sympathizers gave money.
Mr.Corlin said that Pam Keyes, the former Public Works Director, deserves a tip of the fedora for making the decision that won the hilltop area known as The Boneyard for the Dog Park.
Previously utilized for public works-type storage, Ms. Keyes concluded that the grounds could be efficiently cleared.
About two hundred hurdles were left to clear, but ultimately, and officially on Saturday, the most scenic park in Culver City was born.
