Sit. Stay: Village Council pauses talks on new dog beach in Winnetka

It was over before it started.

What was supposed to be a meeting to discuss allowing an off-leash dog beach at Tower Road Beach ended after a little more than a half hour with the Winnetka Village Council voting 4-1 to defer the discussion to an undetermined future meeting.

Inside a council chamber filled with dog beach supporters on June 30, Village President Bob Dearborn explained that the Village had proposed a pilot program that would allow an off-leash dog beach to operate at Tower Road Beach. A dog beach has for decades been located at Centennial Road Beach, but recently, only leashed dogs have been allowed.

Over the past year, the Winnetka Park District, which operates the dog beach, attempted to meet a Cook County ordinance by proposing fencing around the off-leash park. But those plans were rejected by the Village Council after receiving unanimous negative recommendations from the Village’s three regulatory bodies (Design Review Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, Plan Commission).

Earlier this month, Village and park district officials met to see if they could come to an agreement that would resolve the issues surrounding the dog beach.

The Village Council’s proposal was, for eight weeks from July 8 to Sept. 7, to allow dogs to be off-leash at Tower Road Beach from 6-8:30 a.m. before the beach opened to the public. At the same time, Centennial would have been temporarily converted into a “passive recreation” beach.

Dearborn explained at the June 30 meeting that Tower Road Beach has split ownership between the Village and the park district. He noted that the Village-owned portion, where the dog beach would operate, has been leased to the park district since the 1940s.

But Dearborn told the crowd on Tuesday that the Village and park district could not come to an agreement on specific language in the proposed lease.

“The park district had a meeting last Thursday night (June 25) and I think it’s fair to say that, even on their board, there’s not broad consensus and support for this program,” he said. “There were challenges that were put forward and highlighted. We think we could work through all those challenges, but we’re not together with the park district on this right now.”

Because of that disagreement, trustees said they would rather defer any action on the beaches until both parties are satisfied with the proposal.

All trustees expressed support for the Village’s proposal, and most expressed disappointment that an agreement couldn’t be reached.

“We’re not the ones that have been trying to change Centennial Park. That is the park district’s (idea),” Trustee Bridget Orsic said. “Frankly, if they’re not excited about doing it with us and had a four-hour meeting saying why they don’t want to do it with us. … It sounds like the dog owners are not interested and the park district is not interested.”

While she added that she was “very excited” about the Tower Road Beach proposal, “It’s just going to be one thing after another. People complaining for whatever reasons they have because they don’t want this to work. So unless the park district is enthusiastically on board saying, ‘This sounds like fun for our furry friends,’ I’m fine just moving on.”

Trustee Kim Handler said that the idea to relocate the dog beach to Tower Road was initially proposed by the park district, even going so far as to have renderings of what it might look like. And it was the park district that initially “decided to walk away from that suggestion.”

“(The Village’s idea was) let’s unearth this plan that the park district had actually initially come up with and let’s move the dogs to Tower Road Beach,” she said. “I live up in that area and I will tell you dogs are already on Tower Road Beach every morning before the beach opens, but now there’s no regulation on that.”

Handler said the Village “worked in good faith” on the proposal but said without an agreement, she didn’t want to move forward.

Trustee Rob Apatoff said that the trial would not have been a permanent solution to the dog beach concerns.

“I thought that was a really elegant solution to start this and hopefully expand it to more hours after the proof of concept,” he said. “But … I’ve done too many deals in my life. You’ve got to go in with willing partners and both invested in the success of making this work versus trying to find reasons why it wouldn’t work. And that’s the language that we have problems with.”

At times, the audience shouted over trustees, particularly during Trustee Scott Myers’ comments.

Myers said that he interpreted the fact that nobody spoke in support of the park district’s fencing proposal during the public review process as the public not being interested in an off-leash dog beach at Centennial.

“There was really no public appetite for having an off-leash dog beach at Centennial,” he said. “That was denied.”

His comments caused several audience members to shout in disagreement, causing Dearborn to ask for decorum and that if interruptions continued, he would end the meeting.

Trustee Tina Dalman was the only councilmember who supported Dearborn’s alternate suggestion, which was to continue the process but remove the language that temporarily converted Centennial from a dog beach to “passive recreation,” as the decision to change how the beach is used is the park district’s.

“I think it would be great to have both (beaches) available for this interim period,” she said.

Following the meeting, Shannon Nazzal, the park district’s executive director, made a brief statement to The Record.

“We look forward to having the residents make their voices heard at our meeting on July 1 at 4:30 (p.m.) at the park district office, and where our board will discuss what the village trustees discussed this evening,” she said.

The Winnetka Park Board scheduled Wednesday’s special meeting to discuss any potential Village Council vote and, if the council had supported it, potentially vote on the agreement themselves.

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