The current Lyon County highway maintenance building in Marshall could be repurposed as a storage building, in a couple of facilities proposals discussed by the Lyon County Board this week.

MARSHALL — Lyon County Commissioners talked about ideas to update the county’s highway maintenance buildings this week. But there were still too many questions for commissioners to move forward on a plan.

After discussion at Tuesday’s county board meeting, commissioner consensus was to reach out to a construction management group for a more detailed proposal, including more information on estimated costs.

Commissioners went over a couple of possible options to update buildings near the Lyon County fairgrounds that are currently used by the county highway department.

“So, what I’m asking today, is do we want to move forward and have them do an engineer’s cost?” said Commissioner Gary Crowley.

Both of the concepts called for the construction of a new 30,000 square foot maintenance and warm storage building, as well as the removal of a storage building that currently stands next to the former Lyon County ice arena building. One of the two options also called for constructing a 70-foot addition to the county’s existing maintenance building, which would be used for warm storage.

Commissioners had questions about the options. Commissioner Rick Anderson was concerned about whether the county intended to close its Amiret highway shop after expanding maintenance facilities in Marshall.

“The question that I would ask, with option two, is that centralizing everything, or is that just to replace Amiret?” Anderson said. “Because if it’s just replacing Amiret, then there’s other options.”

The county has had questions about what to do with the highway shop in Amiret for years, Lyon County Administrator Loren Stomberg said this week. The shop was built in the 1940s and remodeled in the 1970s, but is still too small for modern equipment, Stomberg said. An obstacle to building a new shop in Amiret would be the building’s water needs for fire suppression systems.

Anderson said he wouldn’t be in favor of only closing the Amiret shop. Having one centralized highway maintenance shop for the whole county would be more acceptable.

“If you’re going to centralize it, I’m fine with it. We close up the shop in Minneota, we close up the shop in Cottonwood, we close up the shop in Russell and everything gets dispatched, similar to what Murray County does,” he said. “But just to close one shop and leave those people hanging, to me, isn’t right.”

Anderson said not having the Amiret shop would mean slower snowplow response in the southern part of the county.

Commissioner Paul Graupmann said he wanted to see more details to go with the proposed concepts for new maintenance buildings.

“There’s a lot of talking points here, but I feel like we need a plan A, B, C and D with some numbers,” Graupmann said. “I would like a number on a couple of things before I’m ready to vote.”

County highway engineer Aaron VanMoer said he would also like to look at the cost differences between having a centralized maintenance shop and having several shops around the county, and the difference in level of service to county residents.

Crowley said his feeling was to have the Contegrity construction management group look at the items commissioner discussed, “and then go from there.”