MARSHALL — The city of Marshall will try again to get bids for a new Aquatic Center. This time around, the design will be scaled down, with options for more features to be added in as alternates.

“The big ones I can point out are a stand-alone splash pad, and some slides,” said Marshall City Administrator Sharon Hanson at Tuesday’s Marshall City Council meeting.

City council members heard more details of the proposed new Aquatic Center design, and later gave approval to advertise for bids.

“We’re still looking at being on track and in budget with this redesign, and hopefully the bids received will be consistent with that,” Hanson said.

David Locke of Stockwell Engineers said work on the Aquatic Center redesign had been going on since mid-December. The design team would go over the plans with city staff and members of the pool committee today, Locke said.

“The city is also doing its own review of these documents at this time,” Locke said.

Locke said the base bid for the new Aquatic Center would still have features including a recreational pool with zero depth entry, a leisure river, and a combination lap/diving pool.

“There’s one slide incorporated with the base bid, and then all of the infrastructure necessary to have the facility up and running,” Locke said. He said there were also six bid alternates, that were each split into ‘A’ and ‘B’ options, “In order to give the city the most options in award for each of these features.”

One of the options for each alternate was installing the piping to put in more features at a future date.

Some of the bid alternate options included additional water slides, a splash pad, a climbing wall, and additional spray features.

Pete Filippi, of Contegrity Group, said it looked like there would be 15 separate bid categories for the project. A bid opening is currently scheduled for March 11.