The end is here for Plaza Shamrock dog park as street project looms amid safety concerns

Months after a car crash made headlines in Charlotte for damaging a beloved neighborhood dog park, the facility’s official final days have arrived.

The temporary park, on Shamrock Drive in the Plaza Shamrock neighborhood, will soon close for good to make way for a stormwater project that’s part of a broader plan meant to alleviate traffic issues along the busy road.

But residents of the neighborhood say they’ve still got serious concerns about safety along their street in addition to sadness over losing a popular community gathering place.

“The real problem is that Shamrock is just a throughway,” Michelle Ewoldt, president of the Plaza Shamrock Neighborhood Association, said.

Shamrock Drive project spells end for dog park

Only a few “very brave people” have used the Shamrock Drive park since a December crash severely damaged the fencing around it, Ewoldt told The Charlotte Observer.

It wasn’t the first time a traffic issue impacted the park, residents said at the time. Shamrock Drive was compared to “a NASCAR race track” in a petition calling for more speed control measures that got more than 600 signatures in December.

By late March, residents were sharing notices from the city about the park closing permanently on the social media app Nextdoor.

The remaining fencing around the park “will be removed this spring,” Lynda Anello, spokeswoman for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services, confirmed to the Observer.

“Storm Water Services will be constructing a stormwater control measure (SCM) to capture, clean and slowly release rainwater as part of the Shamrock Drive Complete Street Project” on the land, she said, which is city-owned.

The Complete Street Project, per the city’s plan, will add “turn lanes, sidewalks, bike lanes and crossings” along Shamrock “to help create a better bike/pedestrian connection between Eastway Drive and The Plaza.”

Ewoldt, who’s lived on Shamrock for just over a year after relocating to Charlotte, said she was initially hesitant to buy her current home because it’s on “such a busy street.”

“Everyone said, ‘Oh no, this (Complete Street) project is approved.’ But they’re not going to start on it until like 2024,” she said. “So that’s why I’m saying to them we can’t wait until 2024.”

Safety concerns persist for residents

Ewoldt told the Observer she’d like to see measures such as speed bumps, stop signs and well-marked crosswalks used to slow down drivers and make Shamrock safer for residents. Shamrock Drive’s classification as an “emergency vehicle route” is a barrier to some of those changes, she said she’s been told.

City officials leading the project have been “sympathetic” to residents’ safety concerns, she added, but she’s worried about a serious accident hurting someone before changes are instituted.

Ewoldt said she wrote a letter to city officials after seeing a child riding a bicycle in front of her home almost get hit by a car.

“I said you know, are you guys waiting until somebody gets killed? Because it’s not gonna look good if all these people have been complaining and nothing’s been done, and then somebody gets injured, or worse,” she said.

After the December crash that damaged the dog park, the Charlotte Department of Transportation and Storm Water Services said in a statement they had “previously worked with several residents and organizations along Shamrock Drive to” lower the speed limit on the road to 30 mph and “install curve warning signs approaching the intersection of Shamrock Drive and Florida Avenue with 25-mile-per-hour advisory placards.”

“Following this most recent crash, CDOT will fill the gap in the double yellow centerline segments with short sections of double yellow centerline (called mini-skips) to enhance the delineation of the curve,” the statement said.

But safety issues have continued to persist, according to Ewoldt.

“I don’t understand how they were helping people slow down,” she said of the changes made after the December crash.

On Sunday, a neighbor on Nextdoor posted that the dog park had been “run over” by a car again.

“We know the dog park is going away this spring, but the problem is not the park,” Shyam Patil wrote in his post. “Problem is these drivers are running over our sidewalks. God forbid, one of these days some car will come flying into one of our houses.”

As the city moves forward with its projects at the park site and along Shamrock Drive, Ewoldt said she believes failing to address dangerous driving will jeopardize any work that gets done.

“I said to (the project manager), ‘Are you putting up barriers? Because whether it’s a dog park, or a utility pole or whatever, people are going to run into it,’” she said.

Is a new dog park in Plaza Shamrock’s future?

In addition to persistent traffic concerns, the official end of the Shamrock Drive dog park is also the end of what residents have called “a neighborhood institution.”

The park has been a place neighbors along Shamrock as well as from other nearby neighborhoods such as Plaza Midwood, NoDa and Country Club Heights come together regularly, former neighborhood association president Ryan Carter previously told the Observer.

It would take working with Mecklenburg County officials to potentially get a new, permanent dog park in the neighborhood, Ewoldt explained .

“It would be nice to have,” she said of the idea. “Everybody here has a dog.”