The Iowa Department of Natural Resources broke ground today (Tuesday) for the Honey Creek Resort State Park, near Moravia in southern Iowa. D-N-R parks bureau chief, Kevin Szcodronski, says the plan is to have the park finished by the Spring of 2008. He says you’ll see a lodge, a restaurant, cabins, an RV park, a golf course and lots of other things.
This is the state’s test run of the destination park concept. Szcondronski says the location on Lake Rathbun also offers a lot of water-related activities too. Szcodronski says the concept is to package everything together to make it a destination that people can come to and companies can rent the facility for company retreats.
Szcodronski says they plan to get the base support systems built this fall. He says the primary goal for the fall is to do the major landscaping and earthwork design for the golf course, and installation of the utilities. Szcodronski says there won’t be any construction on the buildings, as it’ll all be prep work. The park site is located on 850 acres near the existing Honey Creek State Park.
The project will cost over 30-million dollars. The Iowa legislature approved three million dollars in funds that’ll be matched with four million dollars in private money to cover the cost of the roads and utilities. The legislature also approved a bond package of 28-million dollars to fund the construction of the park. The D-N-R says the bonds will be paid off with revenue generated by the development.