Photos courtesy of city of Marshall Donations from Marshall community groups, families and businesses made it possible to add inclusive playground equipment like a roller table at Legion Field Park.

MARSHALL — Residents care about their city parks, and over the past year it showed in support for projects ranging from athletic field renovations to the creation of a veterans memorial downtown.

Local community groups, businesses and families also contributed more than $20,000 in donations toward the construction of more inclusive and accessible playground equipment at Legion Field Park, city staff said.

“We’re really grateful for the people who help us make our community better,” said Marshall parks superintendent Preston Stensrud.

Earlier this week, Marshall City Council members formally accepted donations to the parks department for the 2021 fiscal year. The Marshall parks department received a total of over $62,000 in donations from community groups, area residents and businesses, Stensrud said.

“Towards the end of each fiscal year we go through and kind of highlight some of the donations that allowed us to do some items that maybe wouldn’t have gotten done otherwise within the parks department,” he said.

This year, one of the projects was to provide more inclusive playground equipment at Marshall parks, as part of the “Cultivating the Best in Play” initiative.

“We’ve come to the council before and presented about installing an inclusive playground somewhere in one of our parks,” Stensrud told city council members. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, a lot of grant funding that could help the project went away.

“So this year, we thought we should try adding inclusive playground components in each park, instead of having all our eggs in one basket,” he said.

Stensrud said the city approached community members about donating to the project. Donors including the Marshall Sunrise Rotary Club, the Marshall Community Foundation, Hy-Vee, United Way of Southwest Minnesota, and the Schnoor and Deutz families contributed about $21,000 of the $35,000 needed to purchase two pieces of equipment for Legion Field Park, Stensrud said.

Stensrud said the city was able to purchase a wheelchair accessible merry go round for the playground, as well as a roller table children can slide across.

“Both those pieces of equipment have been installed at Legion Field this fall, next to the new playground,” Stensrud said. “We also installed synthetic turf, which is the new coming thing.”

“We were just under $35,000 to do all that,” Stensrud said. “Hess Concrete did all the forming, pouring, leveling and labor of the concrete at no cost.”

The city accepted several other donations for parks projects in 2021. The Marshall Area Youth Baseball Association donated $15,000 to purchase and install new batting cages at Independence Park. The Marshall United Soccer Association donated $1,500 to be used for soccer field renovations at the Channel Parkway complex.

“We took out the north two fields, and hauled in all that dirt and got it seeded here this fall, so it should be good for soccer come spring or early summer,” Stensrud said.

American Legion Post 113 also donated a total of more than $6,000 to purchase and install flagpoles at Justice Park and near City Hall.

The Marshall Area Crime Fund donated about $3,400 to purchase security cameras at local parks. Stensrud said the parks department had issues with park vandalism this year, and the cameras will be a help.

“We now have approximately 70 cameras throughout our parks system,” he said. “It’s really cut down since we’ve installed them.”

Stensrud said the parks department also continues to receive donations for Memorial Park on Main Street. This year, an additional $12,256 was donated, and the city received orders for an additional 38 memorial bricks to be installed at the park.