As dirt pads are packed in and leveled off for two new businesses, Dollar General and Central Ag Air, there is another new development taking shape in Marion’s industrial park — a community pond.

City Administrator Roger Holter said that pond would eventually become a public use area for the citizens.

“The pond will have a walking trail around it,” Holter said. “And in the long-term, we’d like to put in some trees, benches, and stock it with fish for a children’s fishing dock.”

The pond’s construction schedule will run concurrent with the Dollar General project, Holter said. However, it is not high on the city’s priority list.

There is no specific date of completion set and no specific finical resources allocated for the ponds construction, he said.

“It’s something that the crews will work on when they can’t work on anything else,” Holter said.

Once all the dirt is removed for Dollar General, city crews will dress out the sides of the hole with flat sandstone rock to create the pond banks.

“We can’t sell the lots the pond will be on because of drainage issues,” Holter said. “We wanted to turn the area into usable feature for the city.”

He said the pond idea was inspired by a body of water in Salina that rests in Jerry Ivey Park, an area that had the similar issues before a pond was built on it.

“We figured it would be a neat way use the land that might not even be good for pasture land and turn it into something useful,” Holter said.