This is where connection begins. Through nature, shared experiences, and the companionship of dogs, we're creating a welcoming destination where everyone can recharge, reflect, and build meaningful relationships.
Together, We're Building More Than a Park.
We're creating a pet-friendly mental wellness park where people, dogs, and community come together to connect, heal, and belong.
Explore the Vision
Walk the park feature by feature, and see what each one is for.
Join the Builders
Find the part you, your family, or your business can play in building it.
A Place for People. Dogs. Community.
People
Somewhere to arrive as you are.
Dogs
Room to run, and a reason to talk to a stranger.
Community
Built by the people who will use it.
Why This Matters
The Dakota Rogers Project exists because of Dakota, and because of what a community decided to do with what it was carrying.
Dakota Rogers was a beloved Kansas City teenager with a warm heart, a joyful spirit, and a gift for making people feel welcome. He was accepting, wonderfully silly, endlessly curious, and always ready for his next adventure. He loved his dog, loved being around people, and had a way of bringing laughter wherever he went.
On October 16, 2022, Dakota's life was tragically taken by a stranger. His loss left an unimaginable hole in the lives of his family, friends, and community. But the qualities that made Dakota who he was, his kindness, acceptance, adventurous spirit, and joy, continue to inspire us.
The Dakota Rogers Project is our way of carrying those qualities forward: transforming tragedy into connection, compassion, and hope, and creating a place where people, dogs, and community can come together. A place designed, feature by feature, to do the things that actually help: bring people together, get them outside, put a dog beside them, and give them somewhere to set down what they arrived with.
We can't change the past. Together, we can help shape what comes next.
Mental Wellness by Design
Every experience in the park is intentionally designed to support mental wellness.
Tree of Life
A central sculpture that grows as the community adds to it, each addition standing for a person, a gift, or a promise kept.
Seeing your own mark inside something bigger than you is one of the most dependable ways a person comes to feel they belong somewhere.
Baggage Drop
A place at the entrance to set down whatever you arrived carrying, in whatever way you choose to leave it there.
Naming a weight is the step that makes it possible to put it down. The walk that follows is a different walk because of it.
Dog Adventure Area
Open ground built for dogs and for the people who bring them, with room to run and places to sit and watch.
A dog is an unselfconscious reason to be outdoors, to keep moving, and to speak to a stranger — three things that lift a mood far more reliably than advice does.
Living Graffiti Wall
A wall that is meant to be written on, painted over, and written on again.
Making something is a different act from thinking about something. The wall lets anyone say what they came to say without having to find the words out loud.
Healing Flames
A gathering fire, lit for the evenings when the community comes together around it.
People say things around a fire they will not say across a table. Shared warmth, low light, and nobody's agenda is a setting that does its own work.
Reflection Garden
A quiet planted space set apart from the rest of the park, built for one person at a time.
Not everyone arrives wanting company. A park designed for wellness has to include somewhere to be alone without being lonely.
Built by the Community
This park will be built by volunteers, businesses, artists, scouts, schools, contractors, garden clubs, and families. Every contribution becomes part of the story.
Follow the Journey
Brand completed
Community events
Master planning
Partnerships
Fundraising
Construction
Opening Day
Upcoming Events
Mental Wellness Meetups
An hour outdoors with people who get it. No programme, no pressure.
Healing Flames
An evening around the fire, open to anyone who wants to sit at it.
Held October 16th annually.
Volunteer Days
Hands, tools, and a job list. Come for an hour or stay all day.
Community Workshops
Learn something, make something, and take it home with you.
Stay Connected
News from the build, dates for the next gathering, and the small wins in between.