PIERRE — Despite some set-backs due to weather, the $2 million Game, Fish and Parks construction project on state highway 1806 looks to be ready by spring.

This past summer, work began to build a facility that will hold wildlife staff and land management equipment next to the existing Missouri River Fisheries Center.

The project was awarded to Sharpe Enterprises. It will add 7,000 square feet to the existing 6,000 square foot office and give the department a 20,000 square foot building for equipment storage. 

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“The main part of it is the shop and yard where we’ll house the staff and equipment used to manage the public lands that we have in the central part of the state,” said Tony Leif, director of the wildlife division for Game, Fish and Parks.

“A lot of those lands were recently acquired when the federal government turned over management responsibility for a lot of that property along the Missouri River.”

After the building is complete, Game, Fish and Parks will occupy two offices in the community, one in the Foss Building and the other in the new building.

“It will be a base for operations of our wildlife division for management of fish and wildlife resources in the central part of the state,” Leif said.

The licensing division also will occupy the new building.

Needed equipment for the department varies from tractors to trailers to grass drills to planters for food plots.

“We want to be good managers. We have been gradually taking over the management of those properties,” Leif said of the former Army Corps of Engineers land.

Next to the existing Missouri River Fisheries Center building is an area for wounded raptors. Leif said there are no plans to move that enclosure.