By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Bruno, it seems, is anxious to have a place where he can hang out and play with the other dogs in Sea Isle City.
“He’s excited. He wants to invite his fur friends over,” Carmela Desiderio, the daughter of Mayor Leonard Desiderio, joked of the family’s 2-year-old shih tzu.
No doubt Bruno and his friends will soon be howling with happiness. Sea Isle is completing plans for its first dog park and hopes to have the project ready by this time next year.
“Sea Isle will have a dog park,” Mayor Desiderio said reassuringly to the canines in town and their owners.
After considering a number of possible locations for the last few years, the city has settled on an area in the north end of town on Landis Avenue near Seventh Street.
The city-owned property is next to the wetlands and away from any homes. Sea Isle is asking the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for permission to build part of the dog park closer to the wetlands to make it larger, but not actually on them, Desiderio said.
Even if the DEP denies the city’s request, it is not a “deal-breaker” and the dog park will still be built in the same area, he noted.
Sea Isle’s five-year capital plan proposes spending $200,000 for the project. City Council would need to follow up by approving a funding ordinance to finance it. Desiderio was not sure whether the dog park will actually end up costing around $200,000.
Desiderio and his daughter Carmela visited dog parks in Ocean City, Wildwood, Upper Township and Egg Harbor Township for some ideas on amenities that will make Sea Isle’s canines and their owners happy.
The park will be fenced in for safety and divided into separate sections for small dogs and big ones.
For the humans at the dog park, Sea Isle is planning to build a handicap-accessible, covered pavilion that would be two stories high and provide views of the ocean to the east and the back bays to the west.
“There are exceptional views,” Desiderio said. “This is a beautiful area.”
Sea Isle is hoping that the Cape May County Open Space Board will fund the pavilion. The city already has a relationship with the open space board for recreation projects. This year, the board provided the money for Sea Isle’s nearly $1 million fishing pier and kayak launch site that opened May 1 on the bayfront near 60th Street.
The fishing pier has a covered pavilion that allows nature lovers to savor views of the back bays, wildlife and sunsets. Desiderio said the dog park’s proposed pavilion would be similar to the one at the pier and would serve the same purpose.
Parking was another consideration why the city decided to build the dog park on Landis Avenue near Seventh Street. Two new parking lots were built in the same area in 2019 as part of a restriping plan to make the Landis Avenue corridor safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. Pet owners using the dog park would be able to use the same parking lots.
Knowing that many families choose their vacation destination based on its pet-friendly reputation, Sea Isle has been looking to build a dog park for years.
During the quiet offseason months, the city lifts its ban of dogs on the beaches, giving canines and their owners a chance to get out and frolic on the wide-open shoreline.
But come summer, the vacationers take over the beaches and dogs lose their sandy playground. Without a place to call their own, dogs and their owners usually are out walking along the streets and sidewalks in the summer for exercise.
Brian McNamara, who lives in Philadelphia and has a vacation home in the Townsends Inlet section of Sea Isle, would like to see a dog park built closer to him in the south end of town.
McNamara said the sidewalks are really the only place where he can take his two goldendoodles, Baxter and Buddy, out to stretch their legs every day during the summer.
“I take them on a 10-block routine,” he said of the sidewalks in Townsends Inlet. “I wish we had a dog park up here.”
