Grand Teton National Park officials received a super-sized Earth Day present when the National Park Service announce Wednesday that it would be receiving some $18.8 million in stimulus funds to begin a remodel of the Moose complex buildings and other projects.

The money comes as part of a total of $750 million allotted for 800 National Park Service projects across the country through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Grand Teton’s stimulus fund go toward projects that were “shovel ready” and geared toward creating jobs and stimulating the local economy, said Jackie Skaggs, the spokeswoman for the park. The majority of the funds will go toward the Moose complex remodel, which is estimated to cost close to $20 million. The park expects to hear in early May the details on exactly how much funding will go to each project.

Part of the funds will also support the rehabilitation of the Granite Canyon trail, which has not had significant work done on it in more than 15 years, Skaggs said. Trail work will include improvements to sections with severe erosion and declining bridges. The improvements will start at the trail head on the Moose-Wilson Road and continue to the top of Rendezvous Peak, where the trail meets up with the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

Granite Canyon. Photo courtesy of NPS.

“It’s really a win-win for everybody,” Skaggs said about receiving the stimulus funds. “We address our backlog of deferred maintenance projects while infusing the economy with local jobs and money. We are thrilled.”

The National Park Service has a waiting list of projects needing funding for completion that totals close to $9 billion, according to Patrick O’Driscoll, a spokesman in the Intermountain Regional Office. While $750 million is only the tip of the iceberg to getting some of those projects completed, these funds are a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for some extra and badly needed funding to do some of those things that the parks have needed for a long time,” O’Driscoll said.
Wyoming’s parks, including Yellowstone National Park, will receive a total of $32.3 million in stimulus funds for projects.

The remodeling of the Moose complex will allow the park to centralize its administrative offices, maintenance, emergency services and park storage into one, three-story building. Skaggs said. The park service has already approved a plan that would keep the current outside structure of the building while remodeling the inside to a “one-stop shop” addressing the parks operational needs, she said.

.The remodel will also allow the park to be more energy efficient as many of the smaller buildings currently housing some park operations were build for temporary use and are not well insulated, she said. The new complex will save the park from having to complete some  $13 million on repairs and maintenance needed on the existing nine buildings in the complex, she said

Bids for the construction of the complex will most likely go out this fall, with construction beginning in 2010. Skaggs said the construction process could take at least two seasons, making a completion date sometime in 2012.

The trail work on Granite Canyon will require some 25 workers, which the park looks to hire at least 30 percent of locally, Skaggs said.

Funding will also go to replace a failed maintenance building at Colter Bay.

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