Morgan County seeks federal funds to improve fairgrounds

Morgan County has applied for a federal land and water conservation grant through the Utah Division of Outdoor Recreation to improve its almost 50-acre fairgrounds at 1300 Round Valley Way in Morgan. These grants are given to communities to acquire or develop public outdoor recreation areas. It requires a 50 percent match from the county which will be reimbursed the federal portion as the project progresses.

This project will be the first phase of developing the Morgan County fairgrounds property, according to the grant application. If it gets funded, Morgan County would build four multi-purpose sports fields that could be used for soccer, lacrosse, rugby, frisbee, gaga ball, nine square, bocce ball and field hockey. Currently, there are four pickleball courts on the property; the project would add four more.

Morgan County officials also want to construct a new facilities building to store recreation equipment, house maintenance equipment, provide office space for recreation managers and provide classroom space for recreation instruction. The project would also involve construction of a new parking lot near the pickleball courts and the new facilities building. It would also construct the first 1,000 linear feet of a 10-foot-wide paved multi-purpose trail which would be used to provide access to and from the various recreation facilities and eventually would be part of an overall trail system for the area. According to the grant application, gates, walkways, drinking fountain, restrooms, parking stalls, and other recreational elements are all planned to be ADA compliant.

If the grant is approved, the total coming to Morgan County would be $1,810,590. The county is expected to fund the rest: $905,295. If Morgan County gets approved for the grant, county officials hope to begin the project next summer.

On May16 the county commission unanimously approved a resolution outlining its support for the grant submission and committing to match funds in the grant up to $1 million.

“This is an opportunity that we have; it's through the land and water conservation grant application,” Commissioner Jared Anderson said at that meeting. “It's a very arduous long application and in order to start it we needed to have a resolution that said we are willing to look into this.” 

“It's actually a good grant but we've got a lot of work to do and a lot of looking into what this looks like and how much money we will contribute to this if we do and how that all works,” he said.

The county is also applying for a Recreational Trails Program grant to help fund the construction of approximately 3,000 feet of multi-use trails which would be considered Phase 2 of the project. λ