Pleasant Ridge reviewing installation of lights at dog park

PLEASANT RIDGE — Pleasant Ridge is looking into installing lights at its dog park at Gainsboro Park.

At its Sept. 13 meeting, the City Commission held a discussion on putting in lights at the dog park, which is located at the north end of Gainsboro Park. According to City Manager James Breuckman, Pleasant Ridge received a petition from residents to add lights at the dog park so that the area can be used for longer periods of time.

The hours for the dog park are 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., and if lights are installed, Breuckman recommended that they would be turned on and off at those hours each day.

The City Commission has multiple options before it. One option is to have DTE Energy install streetlight-type lights on a pole near each entrance, which would cost between $4,000 and $6,000 for two of them.

“The question is, I don’t know that we can have controls on those,” Breuckman said. “I might have to explore that with DTE to have those go off at a certain time, because generally those streetlights are dusk to dawn.”

Pleasant Ridge also can choose to install its own lighting, like it did at Gainsboro Park in 2019. That project saw the installation of 38 lights for the cost of about $100,000 for both bollards and post lights.

“For the dog park scenario, we’d likely need to include the post lights, which are higher and have a larger area of illumination,” he said. “Those would probably be about $4,000-$5,000 per light to install those once you run the electricity, do the underground, the bases, buy the light, install the light, pay the electrician. … You’re probably looking at $8,000-$10,000 to put in a couple of those lights.”

The city heard from a couple of residents who spoke about why they feel that lighting the park is important, ranging from issues revolving around ice hazards during the winter to general safety concerns for those visiting after the sun sets.

“It’s a safety issue,” resident Eric Weston said. “There are a lot of single women with dogs that go to the dog park, and at night in the wintertime, it’s pitch black. You can’t see anything. You know, for a safety standpoint, like, I think you need to have lights. Yes, you can do the entrances, but I think there needs to be lights in the park.”

At the end of the discussion, the commission directed Breuckman to look into the matter further, with the potential to install lights at one of the entrances as a test.

Mayor Bret Scott told the Woodward Talk that Breuckman will bring back some proposals for the commission to look over and vote on. Issues still being reviewed, he said, include the location of the lighting and how the lights would be installed.

“We focus on lighting on all of our park areas,” he said. “This is one that we’ve not touched yet. So it makes sense to me that residents would want lighting to help at the entrances.”