Bismarck Park Board members deeded 4 acres of its district's property to the Bismarck School District late Friday afternoon during a special Friday meeting.

The land will be used toward building a new elementary school. It is located about one-half mile east of the KOA Campground in northeast Bismarck, where Century and Centennial roads intersect.

Park Board members eventually expect to develop playground equipment in the area, but no decision has been made on that matter.

Bismarck Superintendent of Schools Paul Johnson said that with the four acres of park district property added for the project, there will be a total of 15 acres of land to build the K-6 school.

"We are building it to hold 550 students. We'll have about 400 students to start there," he said after the meeting.

"What was so critical now was we needed to do the site work there this fall. It just makes it easier to have one entity doing the site work. In reality, the park district will use the land like its their own. We do that with all our school sites.

The board also acted on developing two park areas.

Dakota Fence of Bismarck was awarded the low bid to install playground equipment at the New Generations Park, near the Horizon Middle School. Its bid came in at just under $115,000.

Board members nixed lone bidder Knife River's proposal of $181,800 for overall site work at the area. The bid was rejected based upon an engineer's estimate the project would only cost $80,000, according to a memo. The board opted to seek quotes for the immediate playground site work instead.

Park Board President Paul Quist expressed enthusiasm over the potential for New Generations Park.

"We are getting to the point where they really don't have many recreational facilities there," Quist said.

"New Generations Park is going to be a very nice park. We've got some land up there. There's room for a sledding hill. There's even options for tennis courts, swimming pool/splash park."

He said the playground equipment is just the first of many phases in its development.

S&B Landscaping of Bismarck also was awarded the bid for the irrigation, fencing and seeding work at the Pebble Creek Recreation Area. Its proposal came in at $721,526. This is Phase II of work at the golf course area. The board chose to go with a six-foot chain link fence in lieu of a four-foot inch fence.

Phase I consisted of doing dirt work for the driving range and completing work for a ball diamond.