Mailbag: Dog park will create parking problems

The dog park plan to take over the northern end of the parking lot at Crescenta Valley Park ("Unleash the fun," May 29) will eliminate close to 80 parking spaces, according to the presentation officials gave.

The lot was often referred to as "the overflow lot" during the community meeting as if it was wasted space. This lot often holds the dozens and dozens of extra cars when the paved lot is full. Drive by and see for yourself on any weekend or during any park event. This plan would reduce the parking for the Hindenburg Picnic Area Park to the 48 painted spaces plus two handicapped spaces.

The community center draws people with their cars; the proposed new dog park will draw many more. We must remember that the dog park will be on the Internet. Soon, if you Google "dog parks" there will be dozens of websites showing maps for our new park, attracting more and more people. Forty-eight spaces will not handle the amount of picnickers, community center folks and dog park visitors.

What about the Armenian Boy Scout group that uses the park on Saturdays and always has well over 48 cars show up? How about the Boy Scouts and Girl Scout Jamborees that have groups of hundreds of Scouts and parents set up tents and stay overnight?

Have you seen it when all the parents show up to unload all the tents and gear? Ever seen the parking situation during the multi-school cross-country track meets?

How about the arts and crafts shows? There is room now to park in the north end of the lot. With a dog park there it will make for a mad house of cars circling a very small parking lot trying to unload rather than park blocks away and haul their goods in.

We were told that the surface of the dog park will include decomposed granite and cedar chips. What is to prevent some dog owners, after looking at this very hot surface, to choose to walk 30 feet west and let their dogs run loose in the Hindenburg Picnic Area where there is grass and shade trees?

The Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department is hoping for self-regulation to keep this from happening. Right.

I asked what would happen to all the displaced autos without this parking lot. The general consensus was that the park-goers would just have to figure it out.

We had a wonderful community fair with rides on that property recently. That will never happen again. We will also lose the lot as a base camp for fire trucks during local disasters. This project, at this location, takes away far more than it could ever give.