T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Work at the event plaza area on the north end of the Marshall County Courthouse was ongoing as of Friday afternoon.

Friday night marked the second Live After Five concert of the 2026 season, and, like the first one, it was moved to the Cartwright Pavilion because the event plaza space on the north side of the courthouse is still not complete. In a lengthy email to the T-R, City Public Works Director Heather Thomas provided an explanation on the delays and what the public can expect moving forward.

Over a year ago, the Marshall County Board of Supervisors committed about $475,000 to the event space project, splitting the cost evenly with the city of Marshalltown. Thomas said that despite the delays, they are still on track to host Live After 5 there on July 17 along with RAGBRAI events on July 22 and Ridiculous Day on Saturday, July 25.

She then shared several bullet points on reasons for the delays thus far:

• The project design included structural soil to allow the best chance for trees to be successful in the urban paved environment, including within the event plaza space. This soil is not readily available in the sense that it has only one primary source in Iowa with a specific mix of crushed stone, clay loam, and hydrogel. Moisture content is critical in the making of the soil mix and installation. If you remember back to April, there were a couple of weeks that were very wet. During that period, the supplier could not achieve the specified moisture content because their product had too high of moisture content, so the delivery to the site was delayed by nearly an entire month.

• There have been more than a few unknowns uncovered below ground that needed to be addressed such as:

-a vault on the 1st Ave intersection that was believed to have been previously filled and was not;

-a partially collapsed vault along 1st Ave that had undermined existing sidewalk that was to remain located during installation of a proposed electric line;

-a couple of below grade window wells that had been previously buried;

-a leaking, unregistered 6’x6’x10′ fuel oil tank that had contaminated an area;

-additional unknown or previously inaccessible building basement vaults along East Main Street;

-several previously filled vaults along East Main Street that had encapsulated existing utilities and foundations in a flowable fill / k-krete that needed a good portion of them to be carefully removed;

-a brick underground chamber duct along a portion of the 100 block of East Main Street and a section of the existing water main and several water services that had been previously encapsulated in concrete.

“Recently, the project has parted ways with the irrigation subcontractor. Technically, they were a subcontract through the landscaping subcontractor, but nonetheless, they will not be involved with the project moving forward,” Thomas said. “Based on some recent events and concern for quality/attention to details, this may be best long term; however, it is taking a little bit of time to get a new irrigation partner on board, which they are hopeful to have by the end of the next week.”

When asked if the city plans to assess a penalty for not having the space ready in time for the first Marshalltown Central Business District (MCBD) event of the summer — Rev Up Downtown on May 27 — Thomas replied that if work continues to progress in a timely manner in the event plaza space, she would recommend an extension to mid-July without financial penalty.

“The amount of work added based on the listed unknowns have taken longer than where we are currently projecting to have the event space usable. I strive to approach and base my recommendation on being firm but fair. Firm in the sense that we know that, in many cases, businesses and the public are negatively impacted the longer construction takes, so we do want to minimize that and hold contractors accountable,” she said. “However, we also want to be fair; if there is scope added to the project that was not included – they are entitled to additional time to complete that work. The city does push where we feel it is appropriate and that has resulted in opening areas up that the contractor would rather have kept close to allow adjacent work to be completed, not allowing more area to be shut down until another area was open, sequencing shut downs to maintain access to businesses, coming in on a Saturday to pour a footing between rainfalls, and several other modifications, as well.”

She added that while no one is happy with project delays, a massive infrastructure project like the downtown reconstruction is complex and involves buildings dating back to the 1800s along with trying to maintain access to all affected businesses.

“While we expect unknowns, we don’t get the privilege of knowing what those all will be, or at least their full extent, until we are in the midst of construction. In many of this phase’s unknowns that I shared earlier, those unknowns had a higher level of impact to a business as far as access or utilities than work within the event plaza space, so at times, addressing those unknowns took priority if additional workers were needed,” Thomas said. “If given the choice to prioritize minimizing impacts to business/customers vs keeping pedal to the medal progress on the event plaza space, I will choose and push our construction team to help minimize impact to businesses every time. With that said, we are and will continue to push towards the event space for our July lineup of events!”

She noted that the contractor prioritized opening the 1st Avenue intersection and had that ready for Rev Up Downtown.

“As we look ahead to the next month, there is a lot of construction in the event plaza space that will be visible to the public. At times, it can be hard to appreciate the amount of work that goes into the underground work; however, now that we are in the phase of above ground work in the event plaza space – it will start taking shape before your eyes with the last three concrete flatwork pours; many brick areas; seat walls, benches, and standing tables; planter pots; new flagpoles, and lots of lighting,” Thomas said. “At the end of the day, successful projects take teamwork and that extends to all of us — adjacent property owners, contractors, consultants, the public, and city staff. Again, thank you for reaching out to get an update. We appreciate your coverage and helping to keep the public informed. We also want to thank and remind the public to please support impacted downtown businesses!”

Con-Struct Inc. of Marshalltown and Ames is the general contractor on the project and is utilizing multiple subcontractors.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.