Gallagher Square: the park inside Petco Park

One of the genuinely unusual things about Petco Park is that part of it is a public park. Gallagher Square is a lawn beyond centre field, inside the ballpark's footprint, with a view of the game over the outfield wall — and on days when nothing is happening it functions as a downtown green space rather than a stadium.

What's actually in it

• —A playground, expanded in the 2023 renovation.
• —A fenced off-leash dog park, presented by Petco.
• —The Play Ball Field, a wiffle-ball diamond kids can actually use.
• —The Tony Gwynn Terrace, a viewing deck and picnic space — and the statue of Gwynn that anchors the whole area.
• —Temporary pickleball courts, added in the renovation. Their posted rules bar food, glass and alcohol, and non-service animals.

Watching a game from the lawn

Lawn seating in Gallagher Square is sold as its own ticket category, and it is the cheapest way into a Padres game. It is general admission on grass, a long way from the plate, with the scoreboard doing a lot of the work — which is either the point or the problem depending on why you came.

Bringing a dog

You cannot simply turn up with a dog. Dogs are admitted only at official Bark at the Park events, of which the Padres scheduled six in 2026, and access is restricted to Gallagher Square — no dog may go elsewhere in the ballpark or be left unattended. Both a dog ticket and a human ticket must be bought through the official offer; a standard or resale game ticket will not get a dog in.

Two things we could not pin down from an official source, and so will not assert: the square's capacity, and whether non-gameday access is actually free. MLB's guide says it is open to the public on certain non-event days, but no Padres page states an admission price or posts hours for those days.