The new dog park will likely be built in the back of Memorial Park. Jane Vaughan / Lakes Region Weekly

STANDISH — The design of the new dog park cannot be finalized until the layout for the town’s Memorial Park expansion project is complete, a process that will take months.

The municipality is expanding Memorial Park on Route 25 to “make it more walkable and add some other elements to it that will make it more community oriented,” said Parks and Recreation Director Jen DeRice. The project will include a new playground, expanded parking and multipurpose fields and the dog park.

However, that new design cannot be finalized until Standish knows whether it has received a $300,000 Land and Water Conservation Grant, which will affect the project’s total funding. The deadline for the grant is November, but the town won’t know whether it received it until spring.

“We need to adhere to the grant’s schedule,” DeRice said. “It will drive the rest of the project.”

Meanwhile, the dog park cannot finalize its design until the town has completed the layout for the rest of the project.

“We’re taking a little break for the summer,” said Sandy Boutin, chairperson of the Standish community dog park ad hoc committee. “We’re waiting on the town to get going on the rest of the layout.”

The committee has raised over $8,660 through fundraising and received a $25,000 grant for the dog park.

Memorial Park is also undergoing additional renovations. Jane Vaughan / Lakes Region Weekly

Boutin said “fundraising has been a little frustrating” because they are not yet sure what the park’s final price will be: “We really don’t know what we need because we don’t have the physical plan and we don’t know what the surface area is.”

She does know that the basic needs of the park have been met, saying “we know we have enough for the basics.”

Meanwhile, the committee’s many subcommittees have been hard at work, and Boutin said they hope to present some new proposed layout concepts at the Standish Summer Spectacular celebration Aug. 2-3.

The Memorial Park expansion project has hired a landscape architect and plans to designate about ¾ of an acre to a full acre of land to the dog park.

It will be “truly a park that people can use with a wide range of interests,” DeRice said.

It just “might be another year until (we) have the plan,” Boutin added.