Mason City celebrates $4.5M Destination Iowa Grant

The Mason Metropolis group got here collectively to have a good time receiving the Vacation spot Iowa Grant on Monday.

The $4.5 million grant awarded to Mason Metropolis and Cerro Gordo County will assist safe North Iowa’s repute as a vacation spot for outside recreation.

North Iowa is residence to a vibrant biking group, nice bike trails and several other massive regional biking occasions.

The first mission part consists of new single-track path areas that may add many miles of recent driving to the prevailing mountain bike trails, a brand new massive bike park and pump observe, and a pedestrian bridge to create a seamless expertise connecting path sections together with Winnebago River.

“Outside recreation is turning into increasingly more vital it will actually join all of our trails proper right here alongside the Winnebago river. North to South East to West, it can additionally assist us with our riverwalk,” Mason Metropolis Mayor Invoice Schickel stated.

Mason Metropolis already has a world repute for the humanities and music. This grant will jumpstart town’s plans to make North Iowa a haven for outside recreation as effectively.

“It means loads for our group the tourism that’s going to attract folks from everywhere. It’s going to be nice for the native companies folks will come right here to see the museum, hopefully catch a live performance whereas they’re right here. Get pleasure from our new kayak launch we’re going to have a bouldering wall,” Matt Curtis, a volunteer with North Iowa Human Powered Trails, stated.

This collaborative grant between town of Mason Metropolis, Cerro Gordo County and North Iowa Human Powered Trails continues this assist by appearing on the plans established over the past decade.

“The fact of it’s quite a lot of this stuff couldn’t occur if we didn’t have funding help on the market simply the straight-up price of doing path enhancements and path growth is fairly excessive and so with out these grant sources and getting the group purchase on this wouldn’t occur,” Josh Brandt, Govt Director of the Cerro Gordo County Conservation Board, stated.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Iowa Financial Improvement Authority (IEDA) introduced a complete of $14.1 million in grant funding that may go in direction of 4 tasks by means of Vacation spot Iowa. The cash is 40 % of the entire mission funding of $11.8 million.