Seattle Dog Park Data

Finding 01Any park vs. a legally usable park.

Trust for Public Land's access metric uses a half-mile walkshed — the distance most people will walk before driving. By that measure, 99% of Seattle residents live within a 10-minute walk of a park. Applying the same metric to Seattle's off-leash areas produces a substantially smaller number.

Finding 02Mapping the OLA gap.

The map shows Seattle's 14 existing off-leash areas with their half-mile walking-distance areas, the two under construction for fall 2026, and four sites in longer-term planning. These walk areas follow Seattle's pedestrian street network and stop at barriers — I-5, the Ship Canal, steep terrain — that a straight-line circle would cross.

Two independent checks point the same way. Enforcement: 73% of mapped off-leash citations (2014–2026) fall outside any OLA's 10-minute walkshed, clustering in Capitol Hill, Queen Anne, Wallingford, Maple Leaf, and Ravenna — the full citation-vs-access analysis now lives on the Enforcement page. Equity: cross-tabbed against Trust for Public Land's park-priority index, OLA coverage is highest in the top-priority tier (44%) and lowest in the middle tier (15%), where most of those citation hotspots sit. (Method and sources in Data notes.)

Finding 02dOLA acreage vs. licensed-dog population, by ZIP.

Findings 01–02 measure geographic access. This one asks a different question: is OLA acreage inside each ZIP proportional to the dogs registered there? Joining the 26,652 active dog licenses (Seattle Open Data, April 2026) to OLA acreage by ZIP, the answer is no — nearly every Seattle ZIP sits below its fair share. (Method in Data notes.)

Drawn geographically: darker navy = more licensed dogs in that ZIP; orange polygons are the union of OLA walksheds. The gaps — high-density navy without orange — are the under-served areas.

Two adjacent-but-distinct neighborhoods carry the city's highest dogs-per-OLA-acre ratios.

On neighborhood labels and ZIPs. ZIP codes are the finest geography the Pet Licenses dataset provides, but they don't map cleanly to named neighborhoods. Most Seattle ZIPs span two to five recognizable neighborhoods (98103: Fremont, Wallingford, Green Lake, Phinney Ridge, south Greenwood; 98122: Capitol Hill + Central District). Labels here lead with a primary neighborhood name and cite the ZIP for precision. A few ZIPs (98133, 98155, 98177, 98178, 98146, 98168) extend past Seattle's city line; those are excluded from the deficit chart because OLA acreage is Seattle-only. Licensed-dog counts are floors — compliance estimates put the actual dog population several times higher.

Finding 03How small is small?

The median Seattle OLA is under one acre. The two smallest (Denny at 0.105 ac and Kinnear at 0.124 ac) are roughly the footprint of a basketball court each. Portland's smallest fenced OLA is larger than Seattle's third-smallest.

Finding 03bSpace per resident, space per dog.

Divide Seattle's total parkland by its human population, and divide the OLA footprint by the dog population. The resulting footprints, drawn at the same scale:

What "too small" means, quantified

Three independent authorities publish overlapping standards for the size of a functioning neighborhood dog park and the per-dog capacity a park of a given size can support.

AKC recommendation

≥ 1 acre

Minimum size with 4–6 ft fence, per American Kennel Club (AKC) Establishing a Dog Park in Your Community.

Industry design consensus

1–5 acres

Community dog-park sizing, with 1 acre as the practical floor. Per Parks & Rec Business and municipal design guidelines (Ann Arbor, Fairfax County).

Per-dog capacity

75–100 sq ft

Recommended planning density at peak use. Below this, injury and behavioral-conflict risk rise. Dog Park Size Guide.

Applied to Seattle's 14 OLAs: seven of 14 are below the AKC 1-acre floor, and three are below a quarter-acre. At the 100 sq ft per-dog planning density, Kinnear (~5,400 sq ft) implies a peak of about 54 dogs and Denny (~4,600 sq ft) about 46 — the two smallest in the system.

Observation

Kinnear's implied peak capacity is 54 dogs at the 100 sq ft standard and 72 dogs at the 75 sq ft floor. SPR signage at the park asks owners with more than 3 dogs to use another OLA. Kinnear is the only designated OLA within a 10-minute walk of most of Queen Anne.

Park signage asking 3+-dog owners to use another OLA. Park entrance, July 2019 — encampment tarp visible (intermittent). Tent against the OLA's back fence (July 2019); intermittent.

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Sources: AKC · Parks & Rec Business · Ann Arbor Dog Park Guidelines · FCPA Dog Park Standards · Seattle OLA acreage from data/seattle-olas.csv

Finding 04Peer-city acreage, with a methodology note.

Comparing total OLA acreage across cities is harder than comparing counts because cities define "off-leash" differently. Portland has 38 DOLAs (TPL 2025) but most are unfenced voice-control areas. San Francisco counts 42 dog-friendly sites including small Dog Play Areas (DPAs) inside larger parks. Vancouver BC counts 36 including time-restricted areas. Seattle counts only fully-fenced dedicated OLAs.

A best-effort comparison of OLA acreage per capita, with caveats inline:

* Austin's "largest" entry (Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park, 293 ac voice-control natural area) is not a traditional fenced dog park; the unadjusted Austin total of ~680 ac (sometimes cited externally) reduces to ~80 ac on a fenced-comparable basis (the figure used here). Portland's ~85-ac total comes from PP&R's published DOLA inventory and includes unfenced voice-control sites; Portland's largest single fully-fenced site is Gabriel Park's ~5-ac DOLA, well below the totals shown for SF, Vancouver BC, or Austin's largest.
‡ Fort Funston is GGNRA federal land, not SF Rec & Parks property; off-leash access there has been contested under the GGNRA Dog Management Plan. Listed here as the largest off-leash area SF dogs commonly use; SF's largest city-managed dog play area is closer to 4 ac. The per-capita counts still substantially exceed Seattle. Vancouver BC's 168-acre total (from its 2017 People, Parks & Dogs Strategy) reflects time-restricted shared-use areas on beaches and fields.

Finding 05What Seattle's own data says.

In 2015, as part of the research that became the People, Dogs and Parks Strategic Plan, SPR surveyed Seattle dog owners about compliance with leash laws. The results have not been prominent in SPR communications.

About 38% of dog owners in the 2015 survey admitted illegal off-leash use — 39% in local parks and 38% in large parks weekly to monthly, 36% on park trails — a self-reported figure, to a survey run by the enforcing agency. SPR's 2023 OLA Expansion Study frames expansion as a goal “to advance [the] goal of creating OLAs that are increasingly within walking distance of residents and allow SPR to fill in geographic gaps where neighborhoods lack access to an OLA.”

Find-It-Fix-It “Nuisance Dogs in a Park” complaints now run about 3,000 a year (3,010 in 2025, the first full year of the record) — far more than the city issues citations. Because the complaint category was only created in 2024, there is no longer-run trend to read into; the Enforcement page sets the complaint volume against citation output over the overlapping months.

Finding 06Factors associated with illegal off-leash use.

Finding 07Summary of the Part II findings.

The Part I, Part II, and Part III findings stack into a consistent profile:

• Seattle has held at 14 OLAs since 2009 while its population grew 34%; per-capita OLA count (1.82 per 100,000) is about a third of Portland, San Francisco, and Vancouver BC.
• 11.7% of residents live within a 10-minute walk of an OLA, against 99% for any park.
• Seven of 14 OLAs are under one acre; three are under a quarter-acre. Every Seattle dog's share of off-leash space is about 5.4 sq ft — a doormat.
• Nearly every Seattle ZIP sits below its fair share of OLA acreage; the deepest deficits are South Lake Union and Queen Anne.
• About 38% of dog owners admitted illegal off-leash use in SPR's 2015 survey; residents now file ~3,000 complaints a year (see Enforcement).
• Two OLAs open fall 2026 (16 total) — the first net increase in 17 years — and do not close the per-capita gap.