Where do you actually take a 65-pound dog to run flat out if you live off Mae Anne Avenue or McQueen Boulevard? Until the end of January, the honest answer was: not here. You drove.
Northwest Reno has never been short on places to walk a dog. Dorostkar Park, tucked at 6331 Mayberry Drive, has a paved path that crosses the Truckee River in about a mile and a half round trip. Rainbow Ridge Park has a walkway that threads straight into the surrounding streets. What the neighborhood didn't have, on any of those established routes, was a fenced spot where the leash could come off. For that, residents pointed their cars toward downtown's Biggest Little Dog Park or west to Somersett Park West, both a real drive from the older, tree-lined streets that make up the neighborhood's core. That gap just closed, on a patch of ground most people driving past Apollo Way never noticed at all.
What Opened at 2775 Apollo Way
The City of Reno unveiled a new dog play area at Northwest Park on January 30, 2026. The location itself is the interesting part: it sits on what used to be a community garden site, tucked near the ballfields off Apollo Way, a corner of the park that had gone mostly unused for years.
The funding didn't come out of a general parks bond or a line item that had been sitting in a five-year capital plan. It came from a partnership with Sierra Nevada Realtors, launched with a $7,500 Placemaking Grant from the National Association of Realtors. That is a specific, traceable amount, from a specific source, aimed at a specific parcel that the city had not otherwise scheduled for improvement.
In a report by 2 News, Ward 5 Councilmember Devon Reese, whose district includes the park, was quoted at the unveiling:
"This project really reflects the power of collaboration. Thanks to our community partners and local businesses stepping up, we're able to turn a neglected space into something that will be enjoyed by residents and their pets for years to come."
The play area is open to dogs of all sizes and was designed from the start as a neighborhood amenity rather than a destination park. Northwest Park is one of 86 facilities the City of Reno maintains, and this particular corner of it had sat idle long enough that most nearby residents had stopped thinking of it as anything at all.
The Walk Already Existed. The Off-Leash Part Didn't.
This matters because Northwest Reno was never a neighborhood short on daily walking routes. If you live near the Mae Anne and McQueen corridor, Dorostkar Park has been the default option for a while: park at the Mayberry Drive lot, take the short paved crossing over the Truckee River, and either turn left toward Mayberry Park or head right along roughly half a mile of trail. It's flat, it's shaded in places, and dogs are welcome on leash. Rainbow Ridge Park serves a similar role a bit further into the neighborhood, with a paved walkway that connects directly into residential streets rather than requiring a drive to reach a trailhead.
Both of those parks work well for the walk. Neither one was built for the part of the routine that comes after the walk, the ten or fifteen minutes where a dog actually gets to run without a leash attached. That distinction sounds small until you notice how far people were willing to travel for it. Reno's own list of established dog parks groups the new Northwest Reno spot alongside destinations like Rancho San Rafael Regional Park, the Sparks Marina Dog Park, and Somersett Park West, all of which draw dog owners from well outside their immediate neighborhoods. Downtown's Biggest Little Dog Park, a fenced astroturf lot with separate big-dog and small-dog sides, has served as the fallback for a lot of west-side residents simply because it existed and was open, not because it was close.
That's the actual shift. Northwest Reno residents weren't lacking a place to walk. They were lacking a place to finish the walk without getting back in the car first.
The Practical Details
If you're planning to check it out, here's what's actually true about the site as of this fall:
- Address: Northwest Park, 2775 Apollo Way, Reno, NV 89503
- Location within the park: the former community garden site, near the baseball fields
- Access: open to dogs of all sizes
- Hours: city parks generally run dawn to dusk unless posted otherwise
- Cost: no entry fee, consistent with the rest of Reno's park system
None of this required a special trip planning app or a membership. It's a City of Reno facility, funded in part by a local industry group, sitting inside a park most Apollo Way residents already drive past on the way to somewhere else.
Where Everyone Was Driving To Before
It's worth being specific about what the alternatives actually looked like, because the contrast is what makes the new site meaningful rather than incidental. Somersett Park West sits inside the Somersett master plan, a separate community about five minutes west of Northwest Reno's established streets, built around its own golf course and trail network. It's a fine dog park, but it belongs to a different neighborhood with a different price point and a different HOA structure. Driving there for a daily off-leash session means driving out of the neighborhood entirely.
The downtown option carries its own tradeoff. Biggest Little Dog Park is functional, fenced, and free, but it's astroturf with a single bench per side and no shade, built for a dense urban footprint rather than a long visit. For a Northwest Reno resident, getting there means crossing most of the city first.
Neither option was wrong. They were just proof that the demand for off-leash space existed in this neighborhood long before the supply did. People were willing to drive five minutes west or fifteen minutes downtown rather than go without it. Now they don't have to choose between the two.
What Changes on Apollo Way Now
The practical version of this is simple. A resident near Mae Anne or McQueen can still start the day the way they always have, with the paved crossing at Dorostkar Park or a loop through Rainbow Ridge. What's different is what happens after. Instead of loading the dog back into the car to drive to Somersett or downtown for the part of the walk where the leash comes off, that stretch of the routine now happens inside the neighborhood, on a parcel that sat unused for years before a $7,500 grant and a Saturday of volunteer cleanup turned it into something residents actually use.
That's a small change measured in minutes saved per walk. Measured across a neighborhood full of established homes with yards and long-time residents who already walk their dogs daily, it's the kind of amenity that shows up in how a place feels to live in day to day, long before it shows up in any market report. Northwest Reno didn't get a flashier park. It got the one piece its existing routine was missing, with support from a local Realtor association.
If you're weighing a move to Northwest Reno, or you already call Mae Anne Avenue or McQueen Boulevard home and want a straight answer about how the neighborhood actually functions day to day, from parks and trails to what a specific street or floor plan is really worth, The Mike Wood Team has spent two decades paying attention to exactly this kind of detail across Reno, Sparks, and the rest of Northern Nevada. Make Your Next Move With Confidence.
