MARSHALL — It’s not always easy for traffic to navigate the intersection in front of the former Shopko property in Marshall, Marshall Public Works Director Jason Anderson said. Over the past two years, city staff have been looking at ways to improve safety at the intersection, Anderson told Marshall City Council members this week.

Anderson brought a study with possible options for redesigning the intersection of Susan Drive and a Highway 59 frontage road before the council on Tuesday. The council voted to accept the report, but that didn’t commit them to rebuilding the intersection, Anderson said.

If the council liked any of the proposed intersection layouts in the report, they could apply for future grant funding using the report, he said.

“We actually got approval back in fall of 2023 to start this report,” Anderson said. At the time, Marshall city staff were looking at applying for grant funding to improve the pavement at the intersection. They were also looking at ways to possibly improve how the intersection functioned.

“It’s a very big intersection. It’s wide, there’s a lot of lanes,” Anderson said. With stores filling in the old Shopko building and creating more traffic, things could also get worse in the future, he said.

Marshall city staff worked with engineering firm Bolton & Menk to prepare a report that could be used in support of grant applications, Anderson said. The report wasn’t finished in time for a 2023 grant cycle.

Anderson said the report included three possible ways that could be used to redesign the intersection. One option would close the current main entrance to the former Shopko parking lot, and move it further north along Susan Drive.

“It removes one direction of traffic to make it simpler,” Anderson said.

Another option in the report would keep the access to the former Shopko parking lot, but remove the access to the Walmart parking lot. “If you did this, you would probably have to pair it with improvements on Boyer Drive, at the Walmart access,” Anderson said. The city council’s Public Improvement and Transportation Committee was not in favor of that option, he said.

A third layout would leave the intersection “pretty much as is,” but reduce the number of lanes at the intersection.

“All of these were vetted by the traffic engineers at Bolton & Menk,” Anderson said.

Council members voted to accept the report on the intersection.