Photo by Deb Gau Lyon County Environmental Administrator Roger Schroeder delivers on construction bid for Garvin Park updates during the Lyon County board of commissioners meeting.

MARSHALL — When bids for planned updates at Garvin Park came in much higher than expected last month, Lyon County commissioners started over. After rejecting the bids and advertising a smaller project, commissioners were able to approve a roughly $696,000 bid on Wednesday.

Lyon County Environmental Administrator Roger Schroeder said the county received one bid for the park project. Even with the new bid, the total cost of the park project will exceed state grant funding by about $174,000, Schroeder said.

Lyon County received a roughly $1.1 million state Legacy grant to make improvements like replacing restrooms, building a bigger main picnic shelter, resurfacing parking lots, and building an ADA-accessible trail to the warming house at Garvin Park. The grant also requires a 10% local match from the county, which comes to about $123,000, Schroeder said.

In June, county commissioners had voted to reject construction bids for the Garvin Park project when the low bid came in at more than $500,000 over an engineer’s estimate. Commissioner Todd Draper said he thought the discrepancy came from a line item in the estimate being much lower than it should have been.

Schroeder said the county advertised for bids for Garvin Park construction, but with changes to the project that would help reduce costs. The reductions included removing some items from the project, like asphalt resurfacing and some landscaping items, as well as reducing the amount of concrete included in the project.

“We trimmed the concrete way back,” Schroeder said Tuesday.

Part of the plan would be to work with the Lyon County Highway Department and county staff for items like asphalt surfacing and landscaping, Schroeder said.

Draper said the county also had some funds that could be used to make up for the shortfall in project expenses. The price of concrete also wasn’t likely to go down soon, he said.

Commissioner Rick Anderson said the county could try filing for an extension for the Garvin Park project. However, after more discussion, commissioners said it seemed like it might be a good choice to move forward and finish the parts of the project that could be done now. Commissioners voted to accept the bid.