‘Our Lakefront Matters’: Village Council ready to reject park district’s dog-beach plan

Describing the proposal as “excessive, unprecedented and fundamentally flawed,” Winnetka trustees Tuesday night delivered a sharp rebuke of the park district’s plans for Centennial Beach, authoring what is essentially the coup de grâce for the district’s current vision at one of its prized assets.

Winnetka’s Village Council during its May 19 meeting voted 5-1 to direct village staff to prepare documents denying the Winnetka Park District’s special-use permit request to install fencing on a portion of Centennial Beach.

The council’s decision was the fourth unfavorable vote a Village board has given the park district’s plans this year. The district had before Tuesday received recommendations of denials from three Village Council advisory boards: the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Plan Commission and the Design Review Board.

As previously reported by The Record, Winnetka Park District officials in late 2025 announced that plans to install temporary dog beach fencing at Centennial would go before the full slate of village advisory boards starting in January of 2026.

Park officials hoped to erect the fencing to provide an enclosure that would formally allow the district to once again operate an off-leash dog beach at Centennial.

‘Nobody wants this’

After multiple hours of staff presentations, board deliberations and questions, and public comment on Tuesday, Village trustees each shared their opinions of the district’s plans.

Trustee Bridget Orsic, who along with trustee Rob Apatoff is one of the council’s lakefront liaisons, cited the lack of resident support the project has received throughout its many public meetings.

“All these years we’ve been discussing this, no one has ever come up and said ‘this is what I want,’” Orsic said. “There is no one tonight (who spoke in support). Nobody wants this.”

Orsic concluded by saying that she believes there are feasible alternatives for an off-leash dog area at other locations in the village and that she is “opposed to this fencing on the beach.”

Kim Handler, while sharing her remarks, said safety was the determining factor, noting that she could not support the proposal because she doesn’t “believe that it adequately protects public safety along our lakefront.”

She also argued that the park district has not demonstrated the level of “fencing and infrastructure” it is requesting is the “less intrusive or safest way to address the issue.”

“It seems like the plan is attempting to solve a limited problem with really excessive intervention or an excessive design,” Handler said.

Trustees Kirk Albinson and Tina Dalman both struck similar chords during their comments, saying they each could not find compelling enough reasons to go against the recommendations of denial by the council’s advisory boards.

“Had we been served up an application where there had been a split vote or a lot of debate that was on the fence, I think we’d have more to discuss here,” Albinson said. “I don’t feel it’s necessarily right for me (to disagree) unless there’s some fundamental reason why we would adjudicate this differently than our lower boards and commission.”

Dalman also stated she’s “not convinced this is the least intrusive option for the general benefit and welfare of the village.”

Apatoff — who throughout his five-plus years of service on the council has seen several lakefront proposals and park-district-related discussions, both formal and informal, come before the council — was perhaps the most stern in refuting the proposal.

“Our lakefront matters,” Apatoff said. “Village Council oversight is essential to keep our greatest community asset accessible to the public, environmentally sound and protected for future generations. That is why the continued push for this unprecedented chain-link fence on what has widely been considered the nicest beach in Winnetka greatly concerns me.”

Apatoff joined Orsic in also noting that the Village had discussions with the park district about alternative locations for an off-leash dog area, but none of them, at least yet, was further pursued.

Trustee Scott Myers took a different route than his peers on the council, casting the only vote against denying the park’s proposal Tuesday night. Myers is notably the only member of a Winnetka board or commission who did not vote to oppose the plans.

Part of Myers’ reasoning focused on his belief that the Village Council should not take a direct say in the programming matters of the park district. He said the council should respect the district’s sentiments — which it has repeatedly stated over years of public meetings — that there is a desire among residents for an off-leash dog beach.

Myers was clear though in asserting that he could not support the district’s proposal unless several contingencies were in place.

“I understand the dilemma that the park district finds themselves in, where they have people demanding a dog beach back in 2018-’19 and now everyone is fighting the dog beach,” he said, while noting that he would not be in favor of the type of proposed fencing being permanent.

“So the only way that I would vote for this is that we provide a special-use permit contingent on getting an easement (for the land near 205 Sheridan Road), contingent on the fence never extending the water line and that the special-use permit exists for three years.”

What’s next?

With no clear path to receiving the approval it needs to move forward, the Winnetka Park Board of Commissioners will seemingly need to go back to the drawing board if its intentions for Centennial remain consistent with their proposal.

In a statement sent to The Record after the meeting, Elise Gibson, president of the Park Board, said the council’s decision Tuesday was “disappointing, but it was not entirely unexpected.”

“The Park District has worked diligently to balance the needs and interests of the broader community and I anticipate that our Board will discuss the Village Council decision further at our meeting next week,” Gibson said.

Jeff Tyson, current vice president of the Park Board, told The Record after the meeting that he was “not surprised” by the council’s feedback.

“All momentum was certainly headed that direction,” Tyson told The Record. “I was happy to hear some directional feedback for the first time. We’ve presented these options, and, historically, we’ve gotten a lot of ‘no’ but not much beyond that.”

Tyson said the board will regroup and discuss what’s next but noted he could not provide a clear and precise timeline of what’s ahead for commissioners.

The dog beach at Centennial is currently open but functioning strictly as an on-leash beach. Gibson told The Record that “it does not seem likely from a timing perspective that there will be an off-leash dog beach this summer.”

The park board is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. next Thursday, May 28.

The background

Fencing at the Centennial dog beach has now been a point of contention among various entities for several years.

As previously reported by The Record, the park district installed a temporary fence at the dog beach along the northern and southern property lines in the winter of 2023; however, that fence was removed and the project tabled “due to a lack of permitting approval,” park district staff said at the time.

Then, more than two years later (March of 2025), Winnetka park commissioners directed staff to produce new plans for a temporary fence at Centennial after officials said installing that fencing is necessary for the district to comply with the current Cook County Animal Control Ordinance.

Prior to these recent discussions, park officials have publicly stated that the off-leash beach has operated at Centennial for more than 30 years.

Shannon Nazzal, the park district’s executive director, said during a Park Board meeting that the district earlier in 2025 had received a call from Cook County Animal Control regarding what Nazzal characterized as “public concerns” about dogs being off leash in an on-leash dog area.

Park commissioners subsequently agreed to move forward with temporary fencing at Centennial to alleviate the alleged concerns.

Then, in February of this year, the Park Board voted to approve an alternate design for its dog beach fencing during a special meeting.

That Park Board meeting came just eight days after Winnetka’s Plan Commission voted to issue a recommendation to deny the park’s fencing plans. The commission’s decision caused park staffers to develop two alternative designs based on feedback, said Costa Kutulas, the Winnetka Park District’s director of parks and maintenance, at the time.

Prior to the board’s change of course, the district’s vision called for fencing that consisted of two rows of chain-link fencing along the northern and southern boundaries of the dog beach.

Commissioners’ revisions included a 46% reduction of the size of the off-leash area, bringing the total down from 490 feet to 265 feet as well as the relocation of the fencing.

The north-south border fencing was shifted to the top of the existing steel groins and jetties to use “an already existing barrier into the lake instead of creating new barriers,” Kutulas said during the February Park Board meeting.

The proposed material of the fence also changed. Additional updates included creating a pedestrian bypass area at the south end, relocating the entry gate to the beach level; and installing a double-entry gate system that includes a 10-by-10-foot area for pet owners to remove or attach their dog’s leashes.

Revised plans also, because of the reduction in size, left a portion of Centennial, approximately 260 feet, open for use. Park commissioners during their late February meeting determined the lake frontage would be used as a passive beach without swimming.

The district would staff that beach generally between May through early September and access to it would require a pass, the board determined at the meeting.

Prior to the Village Council, Winnetka’s Design Review Board served as the most recent critic of the proposal. During April proceedings, the board was critical of the quality of the proposed material on the fence in both of the park’s options. The board later in early May unanimously voted to deny a certificate of appropriateness for the project.

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