Photo from the city of Hancock Facebook page This graphic shows the projected layout of the new dog park, including amenities, fencing, shade features, and small dog area within the park.

HANCOCK — The city of Hancock has set plans in motion with the hopes of erecting a dog park.

The idea for the dog park was not an overnight thought, but a plan long in development, said Deb Mann, chair of the Hancock Recreation Committee.

“We were about to renew the five-year recreation plan,” she said, “so we sent out a survey to the people in the community to find out what their interest was in additional projects for that recreation plan. One of the top things that people brought up was a dog park.”

Creating a dog park will take considerable funding, but Mann and John Diebel of the Downtown Development Association have been organizing that as well.

Funding for the dog park was included on the millage renewal that was voted for on Aug. 2. “Of that recreation millage, we had budgeted $20,000 for the dog park,” Mann said.

Rough estimates for the dog park were around $100,000, including the purchase of the land the park will be on. A generous donation helped to alleviate a portion of that assessment.

“We were graciously granted use of the land by Dave and Lisa Mattilla. They have provided us with one acre in that area. If we were to buy that, who knows how much it would cost,” Mann said.

Mann said a fenced-in dog park is a perfect use for an otherwise underutilized space that borders an open quarry.

“We will be providing a one acre fenced in parcel that will protect people from falling over the edge to the quarry, because people do stray; we do have people who are bike riders or hikers, dog walkers, who can easily stray over the edge, into the quarry,” she said. “So that one acre will be fenced in on the west side, preventing any entry into the quarry.”

The park will also feature a line of trees planted to service as a windbreak, as the selected location is in a spot subjected to particularly strong wind gusts.

Mann also assured that the dog park will not interfere with the adjacent ball park.

“We are planning on having some ivy planted on the fence and that will naturally spread to keep separation between dogs seeing the kids and kids seeing the dogs,” she said. “It will be a visual barrier on the actual barrier.”

Another feature of the dog park will be the two sections of the park; a large dog area as well as a small dog area.

“The small dog area will be, of course, much smaller encompassed inside that area,” Mann said.

The two portions of the dog park will have separate entrances, featuring a double gate so pet owners can unleash their dogs within park parameters, and have them go within the proper section of the park for their dog’s size.

The park Mann and Diebel have envisioned will be a small biome in itself.

“We’ll also have amenities that include things like water for the dogs. We’ll have some seating, some covered sheltered areas that will provide shade,” said Mann. “We’ll probably have a mixed base of landscape; gravel, concrete, grass, sand, and wood chips. Kind of a mixed landscape so that we’ll have an idea of what works best with the animals, and that kind of variety is great for them.”

There will be plenty for dogs to do inside the park.

“We hope that the additional funding will provide us with some utility features in there like teeter totters and agility equipment,” Diebel said.

Mann and Diebel know the dog park is a costly venture, but they are working on that as well.

“We have the land donated, We have the $20,000 (from the recreation millage). Right now we have a crowdfunding campaign, which is called Patronicity, and with that crowdfunding campaign, if we raise $20,000, Michigan Economic Development will match us $20,000. I think we have $3,700 now, and we really need to reach our $20,000 goal,” Mann stressed.

The Patronicity effort has been going for three weeks, and has had only limited visibility to the public.

“You can donate online, and there is a charge if you do that, or you can donate through the city of Hancock and there’s no charge for that. We can just enter those donations towards that total $20,000,” Mann explained.

The third part of funding is potentially through a program called Bark for Your Park.

“The other segment of our financing campaign, which we started in June, was that we applied for the Bark for Your Park. It’s a contest sponsored by PetSafe,” Diebel said.

Mann said there were roughly 130 applications. Hancock has made it to the final 20.

“I was a little intimidated when we started, knowing how competitive it would be, but by the time we refined the application a couple times, I thought, ‘this is pretty good.’ As we did that grant application we focused on the snow that we get up here in the winter. Not only do we get a lot of snow, but it gets plowed, covers the streets and sidewalks, and eliminates some safe places for people to walk their dogs. Another thing is that because of the historical development in Hancock; the mines and trains, and the fact that we have a high population of students in the area, there are not a lot of places where people can walk the dogs,” Diebel said.

“The third thing is that the Humane Society is a no-kill shelter. A lot of dogs are brought into this area. They’ve been abandoned or put up for adoption, and need socialization. If you have a kill shelter downstate, after some time, if the dogs aren’t adopted, they’re either put down, or if we have space up here, our Humane Society’s been very good about taking a lot of dogs. So we’ve got more dogs than usual coming into the area that need socialization. And so we want to help that,” Diebel explained.

While being in Hancock, the dog park is not exclusive to Hancock citizens; it will be a public park open to all visitors.

Donations can be made at www.patronicity.com/project/city_of_hancock_dog_park#!/, or dropped off at Hancock City Hall.

Hancock can receive your vote in the Bark for Your Park voting at barkforyourpark.petsafe.com.