Clear Creek Park in southwest Cheyenne will soon be getting a major face lift.

The Laramie County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday awarded a $485,394.19 contract to American Contracting, LLC. for a new picnic shelter and other improvements at the park.

"Basically there's an existing concrete bathroom in there and then the existing concrete picnic shelter, both of which are kind of falling apart," said Laramie County Recreation, Planning and Advisory Board Member Brad Emmons. "So we're going to go in and replace the picnic shelter with a larger picnic shelter and update the bathrooms so they're now ADA accessible."

Emmons says the picnic shelter, which will be one of the largest in town, will be able to accommodate large events.

"One of the things we did was meet with the city and find out what was kind of missing from the city parks," said Emmons. "They said we need a place that can hold a bunch of people and so the goal was to get the largest spot under one shelter."

The original plan also called for new playground equipment as well as the addition of a new parking lot, but Emmons says those projects will have to wait.

"We have a small budget," said Emmons. "Our funding is around $40,000 a year and we try to match as many things as we can so we don't really set aside money for big projects."

Emmons says the improvements should be completed by the end of October.

"It should be done by the end of the fall," said Emmons. "We have tried to give the contractor a large window so that it would help keep the costs down."

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