(Spirit Lake)– The Dickinson County Board of Supervisors this (Tues.) morning voted unanimously for the county to commit $10,000 over four years to assist with an extensive renovation of the Lake Park city park on Silver Lake.
Tim Moerman, speaking on behalf of the city, told the supervisors they need the county’s commitment in order to proceed with applying for a $900,000 Community Attraction and Tourism, or CAT Grant, to help fund the $3 million project. Moerman says the park project is in tandem with some housing projects they have on the radar…
“One of them is the old school elementary playground. We are working on an 8 to 10 workforce priced development there, single family. And we’re working with two different developers looking at the current elementary school and they’re considering turning that into apartments. So those are the two big things, and we want to work for workforce housing tax credits to get them. But if we are successful we would have over 30 units in the next four to five years that we could have in the community. The good thing we’re going to be doing is trying to have it where the houses are required to be owner occupied. So when we build a house and offer it to the community, the stipulation is you live there, and so we don’t have people from the outside buying them and not filling our school, so.”
He says the new amenities at the city park will result in more people calling Lake Park home. It includes replacement of play equipment and a shoreline trail…
“And then that trail’s going to all the way around the park and it would be a great opportunity for families or seniors to stroll, get a view of the park, and go from there. Another piece is the kiosk. We know that in time we’ll have thousands of visitors come to Lake Park just because of the trail and the park. We want to be good hosts to them, so we worked with the council and a committee to say how can we do that? It’s a kiosk, other services, it’s a brand new restroom and shower facility, we’ve got like I said a new playground, we’ve got a new youth recreation area that we have there and then improvements to the shelter house and some outdoor areas for camp fires and things like that.”
Moerman says a little more than $2 million has been committed so far for the project, adding that they’ve also applied for a REAP Grant through the DNR. He says their goal is to make Lake Park a destination.
