Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

Hamburg Township trustees recently approved a contractor for planned improvements at Manly Bennett Park, which includes demolition, excavating, new play area, canoe launch and other work.

Township Clerk Mike Dolan acknowledged the lone bid of $583,000 by L.J. Construction came in higher than what was anticipated.

"That bid came in this year, three years after all the pricing was down. If you just factor in inflation, naturally we knew we would be looking at higher costs."

Improvements at Manly Bennett Park would use a mix of state grant money and a local match. All of it is contingent on Michigan DNR approval.

"The only thing we are doing here is approving the contractor. Then we have to upload that into the state system, where the DNR has to go through a process of approving the contractor on the bid," said Dolan.

"We are still not accepting the state money. We are still not locking ourselves in for anything. We still have another bite at the apple in the future to not accept this grant and shut it down. We are not locking in the grant by approving this, but we won't move ahead and we will lose it if we don't approve this."

Video of the meeting is linked below.