Lafayette Park

I love this park. what it makes up for in its niceties is that the people are friendly and its enough space. I love the fact that although The park is mostly aimed at dogs, there are lawn chairs for the humans to sit. My dog loves it as she gets to see the same dogs and everyone knows each others dogs. I also love the fact that there is no blue water swimming pool!

Super muddy and lots of puddles for your dog to get covered in mud. I would save this park for when it’s extremely dry!

This park looks so rundown and like you could catch tetanus just by setting foot in it. Definitely not something I would ever expect in any part of Bellaire. The dog park was literally nothing; not enough room for dogs to run and obviously no one there. I was expecting something else-​it looked more like an exercise area to a dog pound or a shelter than a great dog park. We didn’t stay and ended up going to Danny Jackson Dog Park instead.

I was kind of sad when I came to this park along my park crawl. This was one of the most disappointing parks since it was supposed to be a nice dog park.
The front area didn’t have much, just some small playground equipment and bootleg soccer field.
In the back is the Officer Lucy Dog Park. Since it was named I was expecting more but it was just a plain patch of land and some small plastic pools.

When you’re three feet tall, the park is where it’s AT. And as a kid, I was no exception. This was the park of choice for my family as it’s the closest to my parents’ house (with Russ Pitman and Evergreen running a close joint second). My dad often says he felt like he was abusing me when he told me it was time to leave and I’d pitch a gigantic, sobbing fit as he dragged me home.
Lafayette is one of Bellaire’s many parks – for a city that’s completely encapsulated by Houston, the city has taken pains to carve plenty of play space out of its limited area. It’s also home to a portion of the funny contradiction that is this area of the city, which my family has christened, tongue-​in-​cheek, the «poor part of Bellaire». It’s within blocks of not one, but TWO water treatment plants, a railroad track and an HPD helipad. Yet home prices in the area still continue to climb in an astronomically high manner. Sometimes it really is about location, location location (and I’m not talking about the sewage treatment plants here!) As a kid it was actually the railroad track that drew me and my sister to this place. We loved seeing the trains rumble through, hearing the sharp bark of the horn, climbing past the fence and ditches and clambering around on the tracks – and – well, let’s just say it’s a miracle I still have all my appendages.
The park has swings for both the little ones and not-​so-​little ones (I gotta admit, I still get on them whenever I visit). There’s also a covered shelter and a few picnic tables, as well as an open green space that would lend itself well to kite-​flying or frisbee. After Christmas, the city offers Christmas tree mulching – residents can drop off their old trees and return to find them processed into wood chips that are great. My family’s actually never paid for Christmas lights or a stand, because people often just dump their still-​decorated trees at the curb and we’ve scavenged them off the browning limbs. (Hey, we’re old guard Bellaire. We were here before the doctors and lawyers and my Midwestern grandma would scold us if we DIDN’T pick up such things.)
But perhaps Lafayette’s best feature is the Officer Lucy Dog Park, located back near (what else) the city pound. The dog park is named after Bellaire’s late K-​9 detective, Lucy, a wrinkly bloodhound whom I had the pleasure of meeting as a child. There are separate fenced areas for small and large dogs, and it seems like everyone has a great time. Just thinking about it gives me a case of the puppy-​gimmies, which means I need to stay far away!
There are lots of old memories bottled up in this place for me, and I’m sure once I have kids of my own I’ll be making new memories as well.