Those traveling in the vicinity of Lions Park recently may have noticed a rather high level of noisy activity arriving rather early this year.
While the park can usually be associated with crowds and cracks of baseball bats during the summer months, this past week those familiar sounds have been replaced by that of heavy machinery and work crews.
According to Merrill Parks and Recreation Director Dan Wendorf, the activity is all part of a multi-faceted project to add a few improvements to the athletic complex in the park.
“The biggest project going on down there is the construction of a retaining wall to serve a dual purpose of leveling the playing field and adding a fence,” Wendorf explains. “The footings are now in and the wall was poured last week. This wall will level the field for the first time in 25 years.
“The fence on top of the retaining wall will help keep observers safe during games,” Wendorf added. “In addition, we have two new scoreboards coming in, and weather permitting the installer for the boards will be here Wednesday. Next week, we will be receiving a new set of bleachers on fields 1, 2, 3 and 5.”
Other projects include new fencing to replace backstops as needed, which began on Tuesday.
Additional fencing will be added to completely enclose the same field being assisted by the retaining wall.
Fencing will be replaced on other fields as necessary. If all goes well, Wendorf hopes for the projects to be completed by next week.
Contractors involved include in the facelift include: G&J Concrete of Merrill (retaining wall), Security Fence of Stevens Point, Nevco Inc. (scoreboards), RTL Electric of Merrill (wiring for score boards), Able Sign-Beaver Dam (scoreboard install), Miller and Associates-Sauk Prairie (bleachers).
“We always make a concerted effort as to find local contractors and keep our work as local as possible,” Wendorf adds.
“With all the parks we have, it can be tough to find time to get things like this done,” he said. That’s not a bad problem to have necessarily, but we saw an early opportunity to do it and we jumped on it.”
Additional improvements will be made to the MARC this spring as well, including new scoreboards and two new shelters for the softball association. The shelter on the existing restrooms will also be extended.
Wendorf adds each of the projects is being funded by the generosity of the Bierman Family.