Dillon to Improve its Marina Park

The Town of Dillon will move forward with plans to improve its popular Marina Park in spite of losing out a grant that would have paid for half of the project.T

he town planned to spend about $410,000 to revamp the existing playground into a destination playground, replace and enlarge the picnic pavilion and build new restrooms. The hope was to cover half the pricetag with a grant from Great Outdoors Colorado, which funds parks, trails and open space projects with state lottery funds, but town officials learned last week that it didn’t win one of the competitive awards.

Now, to make the project more affordable, the town has decided to eliminate the new restrooms from the plans, said town manager Devin Granbery.

“The thought was that we have fairly readily available bathroom facilities that aren’t too far away already, so if we needed to cut something out, let’s cut that out,” Granbery said.

Marina Park already has restrooms, but during busy times, such as the summertime Saturday night concerts at the amphitheatre, additional portable toilets are necessary to handle the crowd. Also, the town is looking to improve the green room at the amphitheatre and may explore the possibility of adding new restrooms there, said Dillon town planner Melissa Wyatt.

The council previously set aside about $201,000 for the park improvements, and recently decided to pad that budget with another $130,000 from a portion of the proceeds from a $1 million it took out last year to pay for capital improvements and economic revitalization projects in town, Granbery said.

Groundbreaking is scheduled for this fall for the new pavilion and next spring for the playground, Wyatt said. Preliminary plans for the new pavilion call for picnic tables, benches, a skylight and a duel-faced gas fireplace under an A-frame roof.