MARSHALL — Marshall’s Independence Park shelter will be getting some major updates, after action by the Marshall City Council this week. Council members approved the purchase of a new main picnic shelter to replace the current timber shelter structure.

Parks and Recreation Superintendent Preston Stensrud said the shelter purchase was “kind of the first step of a few in doing some improvements at Independence Park.”

Last year, the Marshall parks department received about $210,000 in Outdoor Recreation Grant funding from the Minnesota DNR, to help with the construction of new restrooms and a new picnic shelter at Independence Park.

“We have a one-to-one match, which makes our total project of a new bathroom, new shelter, some electrical improvements, concrete, all that stuff, somewhere in the neighborhood of $420,000,” Stensrud said.

Construction on the shelter is planned to start later this fall, according to council agenda materials.

The total cost of the project is estimated at $420,548.

The existing picnic shelter at the park is more than 30 years old, and is deteriorating, Stensrud said.

“Most of the columns have bird nests and are rotting away to the point of no repair.”

Stensrud recommended the purchase of a steel shelter structure from Flagship Recreation. The shelter was 48 feet in diameter, which is the same size as the current shelter at Independence Park. The city would need to add a serving counter to one side of the shelter, Stensrud said. The Flagship shelter kit had a cost of about $72,456.

“I checked with a couple different vendors. Ultimately, Flagship Recreation hosts the state contract from Icon Shelters,” Stensrud said. “I talked with a couple local contractors, to see if there is any opportunity to kind of engineer this out locally. But they said there was no way to compete with a company that’s already selling engineered buildings of this size.”

Stensrud said there were funds budgeted for the city’s portion of the project costs. There was about $195,000 budgeted in 2023, and $39,000 in the 2024 budget.

Stensrud said he planned to work with local contractors for the construction of the new shelter, as well as concrete and electrical work.

Council members approved the purchase of the new picnic shelter.