K-M Lions dedicate new shelter

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Lions Park in Kasson, but this past Thursday the park moved one step closer to its ultimate design when the new shelter was dedicated by the Kasson-Mantorville Lions and Kasson Parks and Recreation Director Ron Unger.
The shelter was a substantial undertaking because it involved cement, electrical, 12 picnic tables, a serving bench, and the building itself.
Lynn Knutson, treasurer for the K-M Lions, said the Lions knew that this park needed something else to go with the playground equipment and disc golf course.
“The Lions thought there should be something down here. It was vacant with not much going on so we started having seed money, some discussions, and getting some community folks discussing it. [We] then started integrating with the Parks and Rec. and with the city on what should the plans be and how could we go forward with it,” Knutson said. “Lo and behold not only this, but we had a joint ventures group that brings other donations that was more significant than what the Lions could do. Our group’s goal was basically just to initiate the project and get it going.”
Unger said the project got going when they drew up the plans in April 2018, and the Lions got the funding going by giving the city $3,000 to go towards the project.
“Then, Lions members went out to the joint ventures group, which is a group that’s formed with the three big entities: the City of Kasson, the City of Mantorville, and the Kasson-Mantorville School District where each entity puts in so much money per year and it would help projects within the communities and the school district,” Unger said. “I brought it to their attention that we would like to have some funding to help fund this thing [the shelter] because the city is always limited with certain dollars on capital improvement projects (CIP),” he said.
He noted that the joint ventures group gave $15,000 over the past two years and the rest came out of the city’s CIP money to reach the shelter’s total cost of about $42,000.
While the shelter is done, the park is far from a finished product.
“Our future is to work and see what we can do as far as with the Lions because they did adopt the park and we want to work close with them and see what extra stuff they think should be added [to the park],” said Unger. “We have limited funds because we have seven parks and so much money is going to go into each park, but we don’t want to lose the scope of this park and just because we built this that it’s going to sit for a long time. We want to make sure that we keep continuing on doing some things,” he said.
He thinks a pickleball court and a blacktop parking lot will be the next additions to Lions Park.
Knutson also hopes to add some flags and landscaping up by the park’s entrance sign.
“I think you [Unger] spearheaded some thoughts with the Lions on the flags, so there’ll be some direction on our [the Lions’] part to see if we can help support that,” he said.
Unger mentioned that the pickleball court, blacktop, and flags should cost less than the shelter and therefore should take less fundraising time to complete.
“There’s some projects that aren’t going to cost a lot of money, but there’s projects that I know that we can do in the future and work together and get it done,” he said.
For now, he hopes Kasson and Mantorville residents take advantage of the shelter.
“Please come down and enjoy the park. Now you have another opportunity for a group, a party, or anybody during the weekend to come down and use the facility,” Unger said. “That’s what we’d like to see; we’d like to have more people come in from the community to use our park. Get it out there and advertise it more and say ‘hey, you’ve got another park besides the North Park.’ That’s our biggest thing is to get people down here.”