Submitted photo A look at one of the two baseball dugouts at North Park in New Ulm. The dugouts were aided by a $15,000 grant from the Twins Community Fund.

NEW ULM — Thanks to the Minnesota Twins Community Fund, the New Ulm Junior Baseball Association and the City of New Ulm, North Park has two new baseball dugouts.

“We applied for the Twins Community Fund grant last spring,” Joe Stadheim, Treasurer of the NUJBA said. “And we were fortunate to be awarded a $15,000 grant. And knowing that the New Ulm Park and Rec Department was going to improve the dugouts at North Park, we thought that if we applied for the grant and got it, we could offset the cost of the new dugouts. We in turn donated that ($15,000) back to the City — the city went forward and constructed the project. And now the youth players in our program benefit from them.”

Stadheim said that the total cost of the new dugouts was around $100,000 between materials and labor.

And Stadheim said that the new dugouts were well-needed.

“Every spring we put up a tarp –sunshade that we would zip-tie up to the existing fencing,” he said. “And then take it down in the fall. And if we had storms or high winds they would rip and tear.”

He said with the new dugouts, there is no maintenance for the NUJBA to do on them.

“They are permanent steel structures with steel roofs on them,” Stadheim said. “It is real nice to have permanent structures there. From our standpoint they are always going to be there — there is less maintenance in putting them up and taking them down each year.”

Stadheim said that they are also a nice color scheme for North Park.

And there was also all new concrete work around each dugout.

“It was all old asphalt pavement before and now we have new floors in each dugout,” he said.

Stadheim added that NUJBA and the New Ulm Park and Rec and the City of New Ulm coordinate on quite a few projects at North Park.

“And this was just another project that continues that partnership with the city,” Stadheim said. “We really appreciate them working with this on it.”