(Spirit Lake)– Some major improvements are in the offing for two highly visible areas in the city of Spirit Lake. City Attorney/Administrator Gregg Owens says one of them involves an extensive clean up of the lakeshore at Memorial Park…
“You can go to the park, there were only certain areas of the park where you could even see the lake. We’ve always thought that was a little strange. We tried clearing out some under growth in the past, it always comes back. And a couple of years ago talking about where we might go with this as a group, eventually decided the best way to handle the situation was to just remove the under growth, most of the trees on the lakeshore bank, and the next step before winter this year will be getting the start on establishing native prairie grass all along that area.”
Owens says some of the native oak trees will remain…
“Some of them have been there for over 100 years. We did have a DNR person come and meet with me a few weeks ago and she gave us some good advice on which of the native oaks can remain and unfortunately there are some that just aren’t viable and she advised on which ones need to come out. There will be a nice mix of native oak trees and then from the highway coming into town or from pretty much anywhere in the park now, anybody will be able to enjoy Memorial Park and East Lake Okoboji at the same time.”
He adds that root systems from existing vegetation will remain and that additional measures will be taken to prevent any erosion until the native prairie grass is established. Owens says an expansion of a parking lot on the south side of Memorial Park is also part of the project.
Owens says the work in downtown Spirit Lake, which also involves some trees, will start after Labor Day…
“The base of those trees is expanding. The roots of the trees are getting larger and coming up. And so we’ll see just about every one of those trees has a grate at the bottom and those grates where they haven’t been cut out, are pushing up. The next stage of that problem is that pretty soon all of the sidewalks will start pushing up. We just can’t have that.”
Owens says the tree roots are also damaging electrical conduit in the downtown area. He says the trees will be replaced with smaller, ornamental ones. Owens says some other work in the downtown area is scheduled for next spring…
“We’ve got some light poles that need some attention in terms of painting. We’ve got some storm water intakes downtown that over 25 years have kind of sunk at some of the corners there that are going to need attention, so, you know, while we’re down there I think it’s important once we start something to finish it. So the intent is to kind of get all of the city infrastructure downtown looking as nice and doing the things it needs to do downtown 25 years after the fact.”
Owens says its been about that long now since the downtown area improvements were made.
