Growing up in Dearborn, I had the luxury of playing baseball in some of the best public parks around. Some 30 years later, I can still say the same: they are some of the best public parks around . . . all 43 of them.

To have so much green space in a city as old and as large as Dearborn really is unheard of, and we residents are fortunate. Dearborn City Planner John Nagy sums the value of our parks up best: “The parks are the lungs of the city.”

The thinking that parks are a key feature of what makes our city of Dearborn a special place to live still holds true today as our city leaders are pursuing a plan to add four new soccer fields and create the city’s first-ever dog park on a parcel of property along Gulley Road, just behind the Dearborn Racquet & Health Club.

The Dearborn City Council earlier approved a land split in the Gulley industrial park area, giving the city permission to continue with its plans. The city earlier purchased for $500,000 an “L” shaped piece of property that was part of the now-closed Michigan Employment Security Commission (MESC) lot and part of the property behind the Dearborn Racquet club. The health club owners purchased the MESC property as part of their long range planning and then sold a portion of it to the city.

Costs for the fenced dog-park, four soccer fields, proper irrigation, a parking lot and construction of a new access road off of Gulley to the park would be about $500,000, an amount City Council would still need to approve. While the funding is currently budgeted in a draft of the city’s fiscal year 2010 budget, city leaders are looking at whether the project could be phased in over a couple of years as a way to save money.

“The mayor has asked us if we could do a phased project because of the difficult financial times,” said Greg Orner, Dearborn’s recreation director.

Orner says the new soccer fields and the new access road to them from Gulley Road would take some of the pressure off of Crowley Park and neighborhoods on soccer Saturdays in the Oxford and Telegraph area. It would also allow the city to rotate use of the soccer fields as a way to keep them in better condition. To alleviate some of the concerns area residents have about creating a new access road off of Gulley into this park (currently sealed with a brick wall), Orner says the road would be gated, closing at 10 p.m. The road will not be a pass through into Crowley Park, he confirms.

“We contacted the past president of the neighborhood association (near the proposed park),” Orner said. “They were supportive of the access road. They did not want to see a pass-through road go through the park. The city doesn’t want that either. It would just be a parking lot. Cars would go back out the same way they came in.”

Separately, the Dearborn Soccer Club granted the city $100,000 to repair a comfort station at Crowley Park and build a new picnic shelter area. The refurbished comfort station and picnic shelter will be opened this summer.

We think the planned soccer fields and dog park would be a nice addition to Dearborn’s current 43 parks. If a phased approach to the project is what it will take to move the plan forward, we are all for it. Orner says residents are fortunate to have as many parks as we do. “We would like to have more recreation but we are very fortunate in a city of this size,” he said.

Indeed we are.