Out: Unsightly Coin-Op Laundromats And Check Cashing Places; In: Dog Walkers

Development brings upscale professionals. Upscale professionals bring dogs. And dogs demand dogwalkers:

With huge residential developments in construction all along the East River waterfront, and hundreds of upscale professionals flocking to the neighborhood, Long Island City now has a new growth industry: professional dog walking.

“I’m going to need an assistant soon, once all these buildings go up,” said Cynthia Zapata, 36, who walks dogs from the Avalon Riverview building on 50th Avenue.

Zapata started walking dogs part time two years ago “to make a few extra bucks,” she said. Now she walks 10 or more dogs a day. At $10 for a walk, a run in the park and a few minutes playing catch or Frisbee, the job soon became a major source of income.

She’s not the only one to see profit at the end of a leash. “I have a few customers who have their dogs walked seven days a week, every day of the year,” says Hanna Polaski, who works at the City Dog Lounge on Vernon Boulevard. City Dog’s walking service doesn’t come cheap either — at $12 for a half hour, five weekday walks add up to almost $300 per month. But with many commuters leaving early in the morning and returning late at night, their dog’s comfort is worth the price.

And if the residents of Avalon Riverview are any indication, the additional residential towers under construction will swell Long Island City’s population — four footed and two footed alike.

“There are more dogs than there are kids,” said Rob McSparron, the concierge of the 372 unit rental building that opened in 2002. He estimated that one out of every four apartments has a dog. At an average rent of $3,000 per month, and some apartments fetching more than $6,000, the dogs reflect their owners’ upscale tastes.

“It’s mostly purebreds,” McSparron said. “You see a lot of bulldogs and Labradors, and a lot of the yippy little Paris Hilton dogs.”

. . .

The character of the neighborhood is already changing quickly, according to Polaski. Having worked at City Dog Lounge for two years, she can tell by the dogs. “No more mutts,” she said. “All the city people that are coming, they bring in purebreds and more of the little dogs.”

One of the most popular new breeds she sees is the Maltese, which Polaski describes as a “small, fluffy, white ball of fur.”

The type of dog owners are changing too.

“They come in here and ask for clothes for the doggies, for nail polish,” Polaski says. “We don’t sell that here. For us, a dog is a dog. We love doggies but we treat them like dogs and not like little kids.”