Derek Rehberger comes to the Patricia Simonet Laughing Dog Park a few times a week. He sits with his dog Rain in the shade near the fence line, part of a routine that regulars at this three-plus-acre off-leash park off Spokane Bridge Road have kept up for years. The park sits right at the last Washington exit before the Idaho line, tucked against I-90, with a fenced grass run, a wooded walking loop, and water fountains that residents from both sides of the state border rely on all summer.
That routine almost ended this spring.
In March, Spokane County confirmed the park was slated to close on April 21, when its lease with the Washington State Department of Transportation was set to expire. The county had operated the park under that lease since 2006, paying WSDOT roughly $32,000 a year for the land. With commissioners closing a projected $20 million shortfall in the 2026 budget, the lease landed on the list of things the county decided it could no longer afford. Word got out, and people pushed back hard enough that on April 14, the county commission reversed course and voted unanimously to keep the park open. Officials framed it as a one-year extension while they look for a longer-term solution with WSDOT.
A Reprieve, Not a Rescue
A one-year extension is not the same as a settled question. County leadership has already said 2027 is shaping up to be another tight budget cycle, and the underlying problem hasn't changed: the county doesn't own the ground this dog park sits on. It rents it, year to year, from a state agency with its own priorities. Every time that lease comes up for renewal, the park's existence competes against whatever else is squeezing the county's general fund. This year residents won that fight. There's no guarantee they'll be asked to fight it again next year, or that the outcome will land the same way twice.
That's a different kind of uncertainty than most Liberty Lake residents think about when they picture their outdoor routine. The lake, the parks, the trails all read as fixtures. Some of them are. This one, for now, is a line item.
Three Miles Away, a Different Kind of Investment
Drive over to Country Vista Drive and the picture flips. Trailhead Golf Course, the nine-hole municipal course the City of Liberty Lake bought outright in 2002, spent the past few years on the other end of the budget spectrum. The city funded what a local construction firm later called its first progressive design-build project, a new clubhouse with a heated driving range, covered hitting stalls, and two 17-foot FullSwing Pro 2.0 golf simulator bays for practice through the winter months. This wasn't a lease renewal. It was capital construction on land the city already owned, with the city deciding what to build and when.
The last piece of that project was the empty restaurant space inside the new clubhouse, and the city took its time filling it. Three finalists made the short list, including a sushi concept called Kasé and a spot called Saranac, before the council settled on Chavelitas Pub Grill & Cantina. The council weighed the choice against what the city already had: when owner Vanessa Orozco first pitched a straightforward Mexican restaurant, the council asked for more variety, noting Liberty Lake already had several. She retooled the concept into a Mexican-American fusion menu instead, blending recipes from her family's two long-running restaurants, Casey's Place in Spokane Valley and Las Chavelas in Coeur d'Alene. Her brother Orlando, an architect, designed the space with a Palm Springs feel, soft greens and pinks against golf course views. Chavelitas opened October 20, 2025, and has since built the kind of following where diners bring friends back for the carne asada fries.
The difference between these two stories isn't ambition or effort. It's title. One amenity sits on land the city owns and can improve at will. The other sits on land the county merely rents from a different government's right-of-way, which means its future gets renegotiated on someone else's schedule.
What's Actually Running This Fall
That same ownership question shapes the rest of the outdoor rotation residents lean on this time of year, even where it isn't in the headlines.
Liberty Lake Regional Park's official 2026 season, the stretch when the swim beach, campground, and fee booth are staffed, runs from May 15 through today, September 27. The Liberty Lake Loop Trail inside that park, which winds past Split Creek, through an old cedar grove, up to Liberty Falls and the Camp Hughes Cabin, has carried most of that traffic all summer. The trail itself doesn't disappear when the season closes tonight, but the staffed amenities around it do, at least until next spring.
A few miles south, the Saltese Uplands Conservation Area runs on a different clock entirely. Spokane County acquired that land outright in 2010 as part of restoring the historic Saltese Flats wetlands, and its seven-plus miles of ridge trail, with views toward Mount Spokane and the flats below, stay open year-round with no lease renewal hanging over them. It's the same county running both properties. One it owns. One it doesn't.
Earlier this month brought the calendar's usual early-fall cluster: the 25th annual Lud Kramer Memorial Concert with the Spokane Symphony on September 5, the Cops, Cars & Cruisers car show at Pavillion Park on September 12, and the RIM Ride the next day. The next fixed date on the books is the Shaw Creek Fall Festival on October 24. Between now and then, Trailhead's heated bays keep golfers swinging through the cold, since the course stays open 362 days a year regardless of season.
None of that changes what happened at the dog park this spring, or what could happen there again next year. The trail networks the county owns outright aren't going anywhere. The golf course the city owns outright just proved it, with a building to show for it. The one piece of Liberty Lake's outdoor life that runs on a landlord's calendar instead of its own is the one that came closest to disappearing, and the lease that saved it expires again before next fall.
If you're weighing what a piece of property in this town is actually attached to, from the trail behind it to the amenities a few minutes down the road, Robert Jacobs II & Associates tracks these local decisions the same way we track comps, because they shape how a neighborhood holds up over time. Reach out if you want a read on how Liberty Lake's outdoor infrastructure looks from where you're standing.
