Living across the street from a park, is it good or bad?

[wjj]

We live off of one park and across from another. Net, net, I think it is a positive. You get some big events like 10K runs and a fishing derby that draw a lot of people, but that is just a few times a year and everything clears up by early afternoon. Sporting events are not a problem since everyone parks in their driveways and people parking on the street are no problem at all.

There are a couple of downsides to be aware of depending on the park. One is geese if you have a decent sized lake in the park. We do. They stay away from our lawn maybe because it is weed free, but neighbors who are not as careful about weeds can have dozens of geese on their lawn and sidewalks with goose droppings everywhere. The park we are across from has a large protected conservation area which of course draws all kinds of fauna that make their way into the neighborhood. Generally harmless stuff like racoons, possums, skunks. But there can be coyotes as well (we have seen them on our deck). We are fine with that (though we could do without the coyotes) but some people do not seem to like any wildlife at all.

The biggest downside for us though has not been wild animals, but domestic ones - dogs. If you live right off of a park, people are going to be taking their dogs there to do their thing, except it sometimes gets done on your lawn. Our neighbors always pick up droppings after their dogs if they happen to not make it to the park, but dogs urinating all over flowers and containers is pretty gross. We used to have very nice large planters at the end of our driveway but finally threw in the towel and took them out since they were constantly being mistaken by the dogs for a fire hydrant (and we even have a fire hydrant on our property, but the planters were more inviting I guess). You would think people would be more considerate, but many are not.