Jacob Dimond / jake@yelmonline.com
The City of Yelm is now one step closer to honoring local servicemembers, as the Yelm City Council unanimously authorized a professional services agreement with LDC, Inc., for the design and engineering of a Veteran Memorial Park on Mill Road.
The agreement between the City of Yelm and LDC Inc. has a limit of $654,648 for the design and engineering of the project. According to Cody Colt, Yelm’s public works director, four total groups submitted applications for the project, but LDC, Inc. was picked through the requests for qualifications process.
“LDC kind of came out on top,” Colt said. “They have some experience with some similar things, and they also have an architect who worked on our stage. It’s cool he already has some connection to us. It’s nice to have those connections.”
Colt noted that LDC, Inc. has “a really aggressive timeline,” which is something the City of Yelm liked. He said due to the proposed schedule, with the contract ending in May, the engineering firm was the only agency who could meet Yelm’s timeline.
The public works director added that the timeline for engineering is expected to wrap up in May of 2026 before going out to bid.
“We have money in 302 (fund) to do this, and it was planned for to do something with it,” Colt said. “It makes sense to get the design done with our money to get to the commerce grant and try to apply for more money to continue this out.”
Colt added that with the addition of a new Veterans Memorial Park, Mill Road will soon see realignment as part of Phase 1 of the project. He noted the road will soon widen the road and add a left turn lane to make exiting that street easier for drivers.
“If you’ve been trying to turn left on Mill Road, it’s impossible. Having a turn lane would be very helpful. Also, the idea is to build that parking entry structure at the very beginning, depending on how much money we get,” Colt said. “Obviously we want all of it so we can build the whole thing, but the idea was realignment and then the front area as our first initial phase. It includes the parking area and some of the initial walkways.
“The hope is we can build it all. The great news, when you have a project like this, once you have engineering design done, it’s called shovel ready and it’s a lot easier for Liz (Jones) to go get grants. With a shovel ready project, already having some money from commerce and Legislature, we’ll be able to probably get a lot more in there.”
Liz Jones, Yelm’s projects and grants manager, also told the council that there’s already $618,000 earmarked for the construction of the future Veterans Memorial Park in Yelm.
Previously in March, the Nisqually Valley News reported that, according to Colt, the park would include a reflection walk, which intends to honor and highlight veterans of the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as World War I, World War II and smaller conflicts.
Each war and conflict would feature three pillars, with the center pillar providing a description of the war, how the United States became involved and more. The pillars on the left and right would honor local veterans, prisoners of war missing in action and those killed in action who served in each specific war. Colt said previously he would like to make half the memorial a marble wall and the other half granite.
