ohmidog!

Some websites seem to be huffing, wringing their hands and otherwise whining about a new dog park slated to open in 2013 in TriBeCa as part of a series of renovations at Hudson River Park.

They all seem to have decided to call it “a luxury dog park” (though its amenities seem no more than most new dog parks), they’ve all slapped a $6.5 million price tag on it (though that’s the price of all the renovations in this phase of the project, not just the dog section), and they’re all referring to things like water and shade as if they were champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries.

If we didn’t know better, we’d think that these websites didn’t know anything about dog parks, and are all just copying what the others are saying.

DNAinfo points out the park will feature separate play spaces for small and large dogs, and have “different sized doggie fountains,” neither of which strike me as luxuries.  The park will also feature — and this is a new one on me – gray-blue pavement designed to compensate for dogs’ color blindness.

Business Insider says “other luxury features include a water fixture in the center, similar to fountains children frolic through in other parks, and umbrellas for dogs to find shade in during the summer time, since initially the planted trees will be too young to provide shade.” I’d venture to say that water features aren’t unheard of at dog parks, and that humans will be making use of that shade, too.

Gawker, meanwhile, under a headline that reads “Luxury Water Park for Dogs to Disgust Everyone in New York,” predicts that “Hudson River Park will soon have a million-dollar watered-down-dog-shit fountain, which drunk NYU students will dive into no fewer than three times a week.”

I’m not sure how much of it is anti-dog, or just TriBeCa envy, but the bloggers sure seem to have their knickers in a knot over this one.

Do rich people’s dogs deserve better? No. Should every New York neighborhood get a dog park as nice as this one? Yes. Does a more a basic and natural dog park appeal to be more than this sort of modern-day one with multiple faux features? Absolutely, but then again it’s New York, and there’s not much natural left.

But whatever the case, there’s no reason to let dogs get hurt by the fallout from our class warfare, which is what appears to be at the bottom of all this.

Some members of the Community Board 1′s Waterfront Committee said they thought too much was being spent on the dog park. (Not a single one of the aformentioned reports pinpointed what that figure is.)

The $6.5 million figure is for all the renovations planned on a new two-block section of the park. Those include two curving lawn areas, landscaped bike and walking paths and a flexible open space between Pier 25 and Pier 26 with room for gatherings of up to 2,000 people.

On Pier 26, there are also plans for a boathouse and a restaurant.

Renovations to the Pier 26 area, just one phase of a far broader Hudson River Park project, still need final approval from the Hudson River Trust, which will issue a final decision in January.