Walk past East Queen Anne Playfield most weekday evenings and you'll see it before you hear the reason for it: a dozen dogs loose on the lower soccer field, owners scattered along the sideline with a ball or a treat pouch, nobody paying much attention to the sign that says leashes are required. Neighbors call this park Little Howe. Seattle Parks and Recreation calls it a youth athletic field. Both descriptions are accurate, and that overlap is the whole story.
Queen Anne has exactly one sanctioned place to let a dog run free: Lower Kinnear Park, tucked into a wooded ravine off the west end of Roy Street. Everywhere else on the hill, what looks like a dog park is actually a soccer field, a Little League diamond, or a wading-pool playground that residents have quietly repurposed after hours. The city knows this. Queen Anne's neighborhood leadership has spent more than four years asking Seattle Parks to make it official. In 2024, the city's own study recommended doing exactly that. The money went to two other neighborhoods instead.
The One Park That's Official
Seattle maintains 14 official off-leash areas citywide, a number that has barely moved in years even as the Seattle Times reported that the city now has more dogs than children, an estimated 153,000 dogs against roughly 107,000 kids based on 2021 census figures cited by Seattle Parks. Of those 14 spots, Queen Anne claims one: Lower Kinnear, reached by a short trail past the tennis courts. It is fenced, shaded, and small, the kind of park that rarely feels crowded because there is nowhere else on the hill quite like it. That scarcity is the point. A neighborhood of this size and density running on a single official off-leash park is not typical, and it's the reason the ballfields fill in every evening.
The Fields Everyone Else Uses
West Queen Anne Playfield, known locally as Big Howe, and East Queen Anne Playfield, known as Little Howe, have functioned as the neighborhood's unofficial answer for years. Big Howe's six acres host baseball, softball, and soccer leagues by day and off-leash dogs by early evening. Little Howe carries a playground and wading pool up top and open turf below, used the same way. Neither arrangement is sanctioned, and the wear shows. Reporting from Queen Anne & Magnolia News noted that a parent broke an ankle after stepping into a hole dug by a dog at Little Howe, and that the turf takes a beating from both dogs and repeated cleanup neglect.
Don Harper, who chairs the Queen Anne Community Council's Parks Committee and has spent years pushing the city on this issue, was blunt about which of the neighborhood's four unofficial candidates would actually work if the fields for young athletes moved elsewhere:
"That one would probably be the nicest to have an off-leash area out of the four."
He was talking about Little Howe. Nobody at the city has acted on it yet.
The Four-Park Campaign
The push for a second official space didn't start with a single ask. It's been a running conversation for going on five years.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| January 2022 | Community Council submits an application asking Seattle Parks to consider David Rodgers Park for an official off-leash area. |
| August 2022 | Parks Department denies the request. Committee keeps pursuing other sites. |
| March 2023 | Four Queen Anne sites, Bhy Kracke Park, Mayfair Park, Big Howe, and Little Howe, are folded into a citywide list of 30 candidate parks under review. |
Each of the four came with its own complication, and Queen Anne & Magnolia News laid them out in detail:
| Site | Local name | The conflict |
|---|---|---|
| West Queen Anne Playfield | Big Howe | Six acres of active Little League fields; dogs are already tearing up turf used for baseball, softball, and soccer. |
| East Queen Anne Playfield | Little Howe | Playground and wading pool up top, youth soccer and T-ball below; a parent's broken ankle traced to a dog-dug hole. |
| Bhy Kracke Park | — | Terraced hillside park with skyline and Cascade views; Harper has said the homes closest to the upper lawn would likely object. |
| Mayfair Park | — | Too small on its own, and already queued for a retaining-wall and stairway rebuild before any dog park conversation could start. |
None of the four was a clean fit. That's precisely why the decision moved up to a citywide study instead of a neighborhood vote.
What the Study Recommended, and What It Funded
Seattle Parks and Recreation ran its Off-Leash Area Expansion Study through 2023, narrowing 32 candidate sites down to nine preferred locations. East Queen Anne Playfield made that shortlist. So did Brighton Playfield, West Seattle Stadium, Othello Park, and five others.
Making the preferred list is not the same as getting built. On March 28, 2024, the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners voted to approve $3.46 million in construction funding, and that money went to West Seattle Stadium and Othello Playground. The Seattle Times coverage was specific about what happened to the rest of the list: the study "recommended building dog parks in the Brighton and the East Queen Anne playfields if funding becomes available in the future." Not funded then. Funded later, maybe, if the money shows up.
As of the most recent public accounting from Seattle Parks, it still hasn't. Queen Anne's own park cleared the merit test the city set for itself and still lost the budget round to two other neighborhoods. That's the mechanism worth understanding if you've ever wondered why the fields at Little Howe keep filling in after the last soccer practice ends: the city agrees this should be a real dog park. It just hasn't decided this is the year to pay for it.
Where People Actually Walk Dogs This Month
Until that changes, here's how the neighborhood's dog-walking geography actually breaks down, official status and all:
- Lower Kinnear Park — the only legal off-leash spot on the hill, reached via the short trail past the tennis courts at the west end of Roy Street. Fenced, wooded, rarely crowded.
- Upper Kinnear Park — leashed only, but the half-mile loop trail is shaded and a neighborhood favorite for a straightforward walk.
- David Rodgers Park — wooded trails on the north side of the hill, leashed, with enough grade to make it feel like a real hike.
- Big Howe and Little Howe — unofficial, and technically leash-required, but where much of the neighborhood's actual off-leash time happens once youth leagues clear the fields for the evening.
- Myrtle Edwards Park and the Elliott Bay Trail — leashed, water views, no beach access for dogs, but a popular stretch for a longer walk down toward the waterfront.
- The Ship Canal Trail below the hill's north slope — quieter, fewer dogs, a good option if yours doesn't love crowds.
- Seattle Center — not the first choice most days given the tourist traffic, but a reliable option when the rest of the neighborhood is too wet to enjoy.
The Two Stops on Queen Anne Ave N
Dog ownership on the hill also runs through a couple of fixtures on the main commercial strip. All The Best Pet Care, which says it has been in the business for roughly 40 years, sits at 2127 Queen Anne Ave N and stocks the kind of natural food and bulk treats that make it a habitual stop rather than an occasional one. A few blocks down, Wag N' Wash at 1932 Queen Anne Ave N pairs a self-serve dog wash with grooming and an in-house bakery, the kind of one-stop errand that fits neatly into a Saturday that already includes a trip to Kinnear.
Living With the Gap
None of this is likely to resolve itself soon. The city's preferred-sites list doesn't expire, but it doesn't come with a deadline either, and the last funding round proved that a spot on the list is not the same as a spot in the budget. For now, the neighborhood keeps doing what it has done for years: treating Little Howe and Big Howe as off-leash areas in practice while Lower Kinnear remains the only place that's official on paper.
That kind of granular, block-by-block read on how a neighborhood actually functions, not just what the zoning map says, is the same lens Jeff Valcik and Seattle Premier Properties bring to every conversation about property on the hill. If you're a longtime Queen Anne owner curious what four decades of watching this market has to say about where your home stands today, a complimentary home valuation is a call away.
