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Video and words produced by Lola Rodriguez

Humans and dogs alike are preparing to say goodbye to Yard Bar due to rising costs of operations.

The off-leash dog park and bar, founded by , has been a staple in the Allandale neighborhood since 2015. ’s final day open is Saturday.

Heaney Clark said when she first adopted her American bulldog named Murray, she saw a gap in places in Austin where people and dogs could socialize simultaneously.

“I was always kind of conflicted between whether or not I was going to take my dog out to the park and run him around or go meet my friends for happy hour,” she said. “So it seemed like there was probably a better way to do it.”

However, the one-and-a-half-acre property is in an area of North Austin that is prime for real estate development, Heaney Clark said. Rising property and operational costs began to outweigh the business model, she said.

“We put pen to paper again and really did everything we could to cut costs, and at the end of the day, the math just still doesn’t work,” Heaney Clark said. “The graceful thing to do was to just let it go and give everybody enough time to come back and enjoy it before we say goodbye.”

Austin today is a starkly different place than when Yard Bar opened 11 years ago, Heaney Clark said.

“The cost to do what I did [11] years ago would be very hard to do in Central Austin today,” she said. “It’s purely because the cost of things have gotten so expensive, and we want to pay our people a decent wage. We want to be able to grow and develop people. We want to be able to provide an affordable product.”

Heaney Clark said she is proud of the sense of community Yard Bard has helped build over the last decade. There are regulars who bring their dogs to the park every single day, she said.

“I don’t know that I anticipated how much that would mean, how much this place would mean to other people,” Heaney Clark said. “People have had their first kisses here, built relationships here, built friendships here … and that’s something I’m really proud of.”

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The day Kathy Dunn Hamrick first met Alyson Dolan, she knew that if she were ever to ask someone to take over her dance company, it would be this young redhead from Florida. Dolan wasn’t even living in Austin then, much less dancing with Hamrick’s company. She and her husband were just visiting to see if they’d want to move here. But in the Starbucks at Oltorf and I-35, Hamrick felt an instant kinship with Dolan.

Both had attended Florida State University and had the same mentor. Both loved playing with rhythm, speed, and time, bringing musicality to their work. And the two shared the same deep commitment to making and teaching dance.

“We just clicked,” Dolan said. Though Hamrick was 20 years Dolan’s senior and the director of her own company, she immediately treated Dolan like a colleague. “There was a lot of mutual respect there I appreciated . … I think she knew that I was in it for the long haul. She did say one time, ‘I could tell you were really similar to me, building your life around dance.’”

Two days after that initial coffee in 2012, Hamrick offered Dolan a spot in her company. Two weeks later, she asked Dolan to take over teaching one of her classes at Café Dance. And 11 years after that, Hamrick did indeed ask Dolan to take over . She had to. In July 2023, Hamrick was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.

The news devastated Dolan and her fellow dancers.

Hamrick was still around to ease the transition. She served on the board and attended rehearsals at Dolan’s invitation.

“Kathy would give me pages and pages of notes and affirmations of things she saw that she loved, things that I didn’t even realize I was doing. Everybody needs that person that’s like, ‘I trust you. I support you. Keep going.’”

That was then. Now, Dolan and the company are preparing for their next new original work, Love, Loss & Other Constellations, to be performed May 29-31 at East Side Performing Arts, and for the first time they’re developing a dance without the company’s founder. In February, 31 months after learning she had cancer, Kathy Dunn Hamrick passed away.

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