Marshall City Administrator Sharon Hanson and Marshall Mayor Bob Byrnes answered questions from the audience during Wednesday's State of the City address.

MARSHALL — Topics like child care, Marshall construction projects and business development were all on area residents’ minds Wednesday at the 2026 State of the City presentation.

Marshall Mayor Bob Byrnes and City Administrator Sharon Hanson took audience questions, and gave an overview of major events and developments in the city over the past year.

Marshall had ups and downs over the past year, Hanson and Byrnes said. The community saw the opening of new businesses like the Marshalls store in the former Shopko building, and construction of the Stone Meadow apartment complex in the area near Walmart.

“Our building permit numbers were up this past year,” Byrnes said.

While the number of permits changes from year to year, he said, “We’re right at about 300 to 400 building permits per year.”

Southwest Minnesota State University also reported its highest-ever enrollment this year, Hason said.

At the same time, Marshall also weathered a couple of severe storms in July and August. On the night of July 18, “Depending on where you were at in the community, you might have had six inches of rain over two hours,” Byrnes said. That caused flooding in some parts of Marshall. The August severe storm brought damaging 70-mile-per-hour winds.

In a Q&A portion of the presentation, the need for more child care providers in Marshall was the first thing audience members asked about. Hanson said the Marshall Economic Development Authority is working to study possible solutions to child care needs.

“In Lyon County alone, we have 600 spots that are needed to be filled by day care providers, and we’re currently at about 30 day care providers in the city of Marshall,” she said. “So, much more is needed.”

“What are some ideas, even if they’re just in the idea stage, to help with that?” asked audience member Eric McVey.

“We have looked at other cities. One city has actually built a home and did an RFP for a day care provider to operate out of that home. That’s intriguing to us,” Hanson said. “We’ve seen other communities do what’s called a pod system. So they take a large area, divide it up, and multiple day care providers are using one building.”

Hanson said the challenges to setting up facilities to help child care providers included meeting regulations, and finding funding. She said the city was also looking into the possibility of partnering with faith-based organizations for child care solutions.

The new Marshall Aquatic Center was another topic that got some discussion Wednesday. Byrnes said construction on the center is ongoing, with a goal of opening sometime this summer.

“It’s really a massive construction operation,” involving 19 contractors, Byrnes said.

“And it was a redesign, and a re-bid. We also had a lot of local community support with donations, and it allowed us to add some enhancements after the fact as well,” Hanson said.

“There’s 225 truckloads of concrete that have been delivered there, so this is a big project,” he said. “There’s two-and-a-half miles of piping that are on that site, for circulation of the water, circulation of the drainage area that is underneath all the pools. So there’s just a lot of pipes and a lot of pumps within all that concrete.”

Audience members wanted to know what would happen to the site of the current Marshall Aquatic Center, near Legion Field Park.

“We anticipate that in pretty short order, that will go out for RFP for the removal of the current facility,” Byrnes said. “We would anticipate sometime Labor Day or after, the former Aquatic Center will be removed.”

Byrnes said the city wanted to take time to gather community input on what would go in the old Aquatic Center’s place, “So that whatever goes there won’t just be the most popular thing today, but that it will really be thoughtful and use that space well.”

Audience member Ron Halgerson asked for an update on the Solugen chemical plant planned in Marshall. In 2024, the company started site work for a facility that would take dextrose produced at the Archer Daniels Midland corn plant in Marshall, and use it to make alternatives to petroleum products.

“The understanding that we have, and there has been good contact with the company, is that they don’t anticipate construction activity this year,” Byrnes said. “They do expect construction activity the first quarter of 2027.”

Byrnes said there were reasons for the delay. One was that the company was developing its market, some of which was tied to China. “There’s been obviously some uncertainty between the United States and China and some of the market relationships,” Byrnes said. But he said Solugen was “still committed” to the Marshall project.