Every morning from 6 to 8:30, the ballfield at Shores Park on 9th Street is an off-leash dog area. On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoons it becomes one again, from 3:30 p.m. until dark. The rest of the time the same grass belongs to The Winston School, which uses the upper-level ballfield and basketball court for physical education.
That shared schedule was the hardest question in a park plan that started in 2014. On September 22, the City Council gave informal support to a concept design that keeps the shared schedule. No vote was taken. The plan doesn't take dogs off the field. It answers the dispute by building a separate dog-free park on the lower terrace. No construction is funded yet. Until it is, the shared field depends on whether the current rules keep working.
Why the field has two users
The arrangement goes back to how the City bought the land. Del Mar paid the Del Mar Union School District $8.5 million for the 5.3-acre property in 2008. The Winston School helped raise $3 million of that, and the district required that a school stay on the site. Winston is a private school for students with special needs in grades six through 12. It has leased the former Shores Elementary campus since 1988, first from the district and now from the City, and pays $250,000 a year.
The City first allowed off-leash dogs on the field in 2012, limited to hours when the school wasn't using it. Fourteen years later, both sides told the Council what that arrangement costs them.
The school's executive director told the Council, as reported by The Coast News, that sharing with dogs has been "very, very difficult." She described students tracking feces into classrooms and the school paying for extra carpet cleaning. She also said the City began enforcing the rules more strictly last spring, and that it helped. A UC San Diego microbiology researcher told the Council that students using a field dogs also use carries health risks that can't be fully removed. City staff have also reported owners who ignore the hours, with staff and rangers cleaning the field before it goes back to the school.
Public input leaned the other way. Of the dozens of letters and emails sent before the meeting, most asked the City to keep off-leash use. The next-largest group asked for a new playground for young children. Only a handful opposed dogs on the field, and Winston sent one of them. Testimony at the meeting itself was more evenly split. In the staff report, the City called shared versus separate dog use the most contested public issue of the process, with strong views on both sides and no clear majority.
How the separate dog park lost, 5–2
The design reached its current form through a series of committee meetings, each one dropping something:
- 2014 to 2019. The City started the master plan with Schmidt Design Group. It paused the work in 2019 because of COVID-related budget impacts and litigation over the lease.
- June to December 2025. The process restarted in June 2025. The Council reaffirmed its guiding principles and preferred amenities on September 8, rehired Schmidt on October 6, and the new ad-hoc committee met for the first time on December 8.
- March 9, 2026. Schmidt presented three concepts. One included the historic Alvarado House, one had an off-leash dog park separate from the athletic field, and one kept a shared dog park and athletic field. The committee agreed on a community building of up to 4,500 square feet and a spot for the Alvarado House.
- June 8, 2026. The revised plan came with two extra versions requested by a small minority of members. One added upper-lot parking, and the other put a separate off-leash area on the lower terrace. On a 4–3 vote, the committee favored more upper-lot parking and an unstudied increase of the building to 5,000 square feet.
- Summer 2026. The Del Mar Historical Society withdrew its request for the Alvarado House. Winston objected that turning the sport court east-west would interfere with its lease rights. The revised plan turned the court back north-south and scaled down the extra parking.
- July 24, 2026. The committee voted 5–2 for a concept that keeps the shared athletic field and dog area and makes the lower terrace dog-free. The two members who voted no preferred a separate dog area.
The separate dog park appeared at two of those meetings and was voted down at the third. The concept the Council saw in September keeps "continued shared use of the ballfield with off-leash dog play during prescribed hours."
The lower terrace is the dog-free space
Since the plan keeps dogs on the field, it puts a dog-free area next to it instead. The City calls the lower terrace a "park within a park": a dog-free lawn, picnic tables, walking paths, and children's play features such as a climbing wall and natural play structures. That lines up with the second-largest group of public letters, the ones asking for a playground for young children.
The upper level gets the bigger projects. The plan includes an updated field and court, a new ocean-view deck, a new two-story community building, an event plaza, picnic, game and fitness areas, open lawn and on-site parking. Schmidt's preliminary estimate puts the whole park at $11.5 million if construction starts in 2026 and $13.8 million if it starts in 2029. The community building accounts for $5.5 million to $6.6 million of that, close to half the total in either year. The $2.3 million gap between those two estimates is the cost of waiting three more years.
What the Council sent back
Council support came with requests, according to the City's September 24 summary:
- More information on the new 5,000-square-foot community building planned for the northeast corner of the property
- Another look at a planned entrance off Camino Del Mar
- A possible expansion of the ocean-view deck
- Cost information for furniture, fixtures and equipment
- Maintenance cost estimates from the Public Works Department
None of the requests reopens the shared field. Most of them are about the building, the entrance and what the park will cost to run once it's built.
No construction date yet
The September 22 staff report sets out the order of the next steps but gives no dates. Staff and Schmidt will refine the community building's floor plan with representatives of its future users, produce 3-D renderings of the building and a bird's-eye view of the park, update the costs, and bring the package back to the Council as the final master plan. After that, staff will work out a funding and phasing strategy based on grants, community donations and future City budgets. Technical design, engineering, environmental review and permitting come only after funding is in place. The Del Mar Foundation is named as the likely lead on community fundraising once building renderings are available.
That means the lower terrace, with its dog-free lawn and climbing wall, is several approvals and an unfunded budget away. Until then the park works the way it does now. Dogs share the ballfield, and the school's comfort with that has depended on the stricter enforcement that began last spring. The executive director told the Council she worries the field will become unusable again if that enforcement slips. The design keeps the shared field, but whether it still works when construction arrives depends on how the field is used between now and then.
The posted hours are 6 to 8:30 a.m. daily, plus 3:30 p.m. to dark on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, as reported in late September. The signs at the field are the final word if those hours change. The meeting is also available on video, and the City's Shores Park Master Plan page is where the final master plan should appear when it returns to the Council.
When a public park next door is moving through a multi-year plan, it helps to understand how changes in design, cost and phasing could affect your street. Our construction background gives us a practical way to read plans like this one. If you'd like to talk through what the Shores Park process could mean for your own Del Mar property, Warren Molina welcomes you to request a private consultation.
