(Spirit Lake)– If you think it’s hard to find a parking spot now near the Dickinson county courthouse, it’s going to get even worse a year from now.
Supervisor Paul Johnson reported at Tuesday’s Dickinson county board of supervisors meeting the city of Spirit Lake still plans to reconstruct 19th Street next spring.
Complicating matters, Johnson says, is the possibility of the city-owned parking lot west of the State Bank being sold by the city. The city council has yet to take any action on the matter.
With the street and the parking lot gone, Johnson says the courthouse would be out 67 parking spaces. He says they would gain about 22 spaces by removing two of the former Ferguson Manufacturing buildings which the county now owns. Another building would remain for storage of construction materials for the second phase of the courthouse project. Johnson said it’s imperative the county sell those buildings as soon as possible to get a jump on the parking crunch. The supervisors decided to start working on putting together a public notice regarding the county’s intent to sell the buildings.
On another matter, the supervisors learned Tuesday an application has been submitted for a two-thousand head cattle feed lot to be located in section 28 of Westport Township. The application has been submitted by Fallon Cattle Company, LLC of Everly. A public hearing on the matter will be held at a later date.
New Fashion Pork is proposing a four-thousand head hog operation in that same area of the county. That application is now before the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
