The effort to breathe new life into Memorial Park received another jolt last week when funding was approved for a new full-size basketball court.

A number of improvements have already taken place at the city park on the east side of town, including new pickleball courts and a playground. City Council on Jan. 4 approved spending an additional $60,000 for construction of the basketball court, slated to go in this spring.

“As we began working on Memorial Park, the pickleball courts were well received and the playground was appreciated, we started to see this park take shape,” said Parks and Recreation Director Maria Butts. “We began to discuss what we wanted to see continue in this park.”

A steering committee made up of neighbors, community members and Whitefish School District representatives worked this fall to establish a plan for more improvements. The plan includes keeping the southeastern portion of the park as open green space with walking paths and a gazebo. The committee also wants to remove the baseball field and move the basketball court to the southwestern portion of the park.

“The consensus was that the baseball field wasn’t being used,” Butts said. “The idea was to move the basketball courts because everything seemed to be scrunched in the northwestern section of the park.”

The Park Board requested the basketball court be expanded to full-size to fill a need in the community. The current basketball court will be resurfaced with a roof constructed over it to create a pavilion.

An additional $35,000 was needed to complete the changed project on top of the $25,000 originally allocated to resurfacing the existing court. The resort tax committee approved the change, along with council.

The project will be paid for with resort tax funds.

Butts said the resort tax funds reserved for park improvements has an ending cash balance of $195,000 and would be able to fund the increase. She also noted that other resort tax projects have come under projected costs, leaving an additional $5,000 to use as a contingency for the basketball court construction.