How to curb off-leash dogs in Church Hill

Editor’s note: Sorry this week’s edition of the newsletter is hitting your inbox later than usual. I’ve been breaking news all week on my main beat, and it ate into my hours for The Lookout. Thanks for your patience.—Dave.

A few weeks ago at Patrick Henry Park, I had to put a big angry bulldog in a headlock to prevent it from tearing a terrified husky limb from limb while the former dog’s owner bumbled around helplessly and the latter’s shrieked in horror. The attacking dog, it probably won’t surprise you to learn, was unleashed.

There comes a time in the life cycle of every neighborhood newsletter when it is forced to lay out its political position on the popular, illegal practice of letting dogs run around public parks untethered. For The Lookout, that moment is now. It is this newsletter’s considered editorial opinion that it sucks. It’s selfish, dangerous, and against the law. I’d really rather you didn’t.

However.

Any chump with a broadband connection can post spittle-flecked screed about why off-leash dogs are bad. In fact, they do, often; it’s a fairly common topic on the r/rva subreddit, and ditto on forums I used to frequent in my previous cities (Charleston, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York.) It is one of the most intractable common-good problems of modern urban life, and the pandemic boom in dog ownership may have made it worse.

I won’t waste this space laying out the downsides of off-leash dogs (personal/pet injury/death, lifelong trauma, excluding others from public spaces, etc.) in detail. Nor am I interested in haggling over fringe cases. What if it’s late at night/early in the morning? What if my dog is small/old/perfectly trained? What if… C’mon. What are we doing here. Richmond’s ordinance on this matter is clear, and some people break it for their own convenience to the detriment of the community. It’s not the biggest bummer in the world, but it’s a bummer. Moving on.

Like people who run Church Hill’s stop signs, rob its intersections of “daylight,” park in its bike lanes, and leave snow unshoveled on its sidewalks, dog owners that let their dogs run off leash in Libby Hill Park, Chimborazo Playground, Chimborazo Park, etc. are scofflaws. There are a few ways to address scofflaws. You can browbeat them online, which is tedious and ineffective. You can confront them in person, which is unpleasant and potentially dangerous. You can ignore them entirely, yielding the public commons to them even though we all have an equal claim on those spaces, which is frustrating and atomizing. Having tried all these approaches over the years, both here in Church Hill and elsewhere, I can state with some authority that they don’t really advance the (Chuckit!®️) ball.

Here’s another idea: build more dog parks. Church Hill has a lot of dogs, and a lot of parks. But with the exception of the Church Hill Dog Park down on Chimborazo Park’s lower level, it has no places for people to let their dogs run off leash. Surely, you can see where I’m headed with this. A dog run on the unused strip of lawn between N. 29th St. and the Chimbo Playground basketball courts? Yes. A pen near the pickleball courts at Bill Robinson Park? Let’s do it. That stretch of grass near Jefferson Park’s playground, right where Princess Anne Ave. ends? Explore the space, I say.

Several off-leash dog-owners have insisted to me that the entirety of Chimorazo Park’s lower level is designated for off-leash dogs (highlighted in red and blue above), not just the fenced-in portion labeled “dog park” (blue.) This made no sense to me, so I checked with the city. “The area that you have highlighted in red is not a sanctioned off leash area,” Parks and Recreation spokesperson Tamara Jenkins told The Lookout. So. I don’t bring this up to gloat; I bring it up because maybe we should fence it in and make it a dog park.

The general idea is to reimagine Church Hill’s parks to make it easier for people with and without dogs to use them in harmony. I think this is a good idea, generally. And all it requires to implement is more dog parks.

Now. Will more dog parks unilaterally fix the problem of Church Hill’s off-leash dogs and their scofflaw owners? Of course not. Be serious. Some people are just weirdos and/or jagoffs and no amount of fencing is going to change that. Should you call the police on them? Man… I don’t think so? Unfortunately our options for public-safety responses are “guys with guns” or “nothing,” and while I think off-leash dogs are bad, I think cops are probably not going to improve the situation. Your mileage may vary.

Perhaps you think building more dog parks in the neighborhood would “reward” these people for their bad behavior. Who cares! If the goal is to improve the community, to make it safer and more accessible to more of our neighbors, you can’t keep score. I mean, you can, but it won’t help. You know what will help? Of course you do. More dog parks.

📜 Possum Poetry

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

🗺️ New zoning map just dropped, everybody be chill

The city is in the process of overhauling its zoning code for the first time since the 1970s as part of a process called Richmond 300, which, I’ve just learned will not include a heavily dramatized, historically inaccurate reenactment of the epic battle between the Spartans and Persians at Thermopylae. Missed opportunity there. Anyway, zoning is a politically fraught institution everywhere, and Richmond—with its racist history, vast inequality, and relatively newfound popularity as one of the fastest-growing metros in the country—is of course not exempt from the complex mix of emotions that code reform attempts often provoke.

“It’s so complex, because I understand what the city is trying to do for Richmond to help with our housing crisis, but I wish our city would be more thoughtful,” one Q St. resident told The Richmonder in April, discussing the city’s approval of a new three-unit apartment building on a currently vacant lot. The East End has a bunch of these, as indexed in Richmond 300’s “pattern book” (basically, an index of neighborhood architectural and geographic features; see above) earlier this year. “We do need more density, but it can’t come at the cost of established families and neighborhoods.” On the one hand, on the other hand, et cetera.

Richmond 300 released its long-awaited Initial Draft Zoning Map this week. Here’s the interactive version, hosted on Miro:

You can also view it as a big honking PDF in The Lookout’s share drive here. (You have to zoom in a bunch, but it’s actually easier to use if you want to get granular.) Your humble Lookout editor is relatively new to the neighborhood, and no expert on zoning. So I don’t have a ton to add off the rip, though I will say I generally tend towards more mixed-use neighborhoods and more housing density as a matter of personal and ideological preference. If you’ve got a take on Richmond 300’s first crack at the zoning refresh vis-à-vis its vision for the East End, I’d love to hear it:

This is a draft document, so if it makes you angry… well, first of all, take a deep breath. But second of all, Richmond 300’s Code Refresh Zoning Advisory Council is soliciting feedback from the public on its first pass on the overhaul, so you should provide it. Politely, if possible.

🍆 Street squash bumper crop coming

Hey uh… did one of you sickos sneak around under the cover of darkness this spring and scatter a bunch of squash seeds throughout the neighborhood? Because all of a sudden, we’ve got a bunch of viney, leafy plants sprouting from tree wells and random patches of grass around Church Hill. I’ve clocked at least four, myself. What gives? I figured maybe they were the result of folks leaving their Halloween pumpkins out to rot last fall, but upon closer examination, The Lookout has confirmed that the fruit these plants are bearing is indeed some sort of yellow squash (maybe zephyr.) Will anybody cop to this guerrilla gardening campaign? And, more importantly: would you eat the forbidden street squash?

📢 Happenings on The Hill

• Getting grave: Friend Bar’s monthly Graveyard Shift is tonight (6/6) from 9pm-12am. See you there?

• Clay for days: The 8th-annual RVA Clay tour is going down this weekend (6/7-8) across the city, and Shockoe Bottom Clay is one of the participating studios. Check the site for more details.

• It’s not coincidental: Reading is fundamental? Anybody? Support our library, hook your kid on books, and grab a sweet treat at the East End branch’s Summer Reading Kickoff Ice Cream Party tomorrow (6/7) from 2-3pm. More details.

• Beer, sausage, and stogies: Triple Crossing Fulton’s event combining three of my favorite things, Smoked, is back tomorrow (6/7). Band goes on at 5:30pm. Make your plans.

• Farm dinner!: Grisette’s dee-lightful farm dinner series is back for the summer, with the first event coming up on 6/22. Tickets went on sale this week and at publication a few were still available. They won’t be for long. Grab yours now!

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

📸 A Very CHill Photo

Want to share your Very CHill Photo from the neighborhood? Email it to [email protected] with your name as you’d like it to appear for publication, and the camera you shot it on.