In a presentation to the Webster County Supervisors Tuesday, Cosgrove detailed the more than $22 million in projects that have been completed in just the past five years.

“People keep asking me ‘what’s next?’ but there’s always another project on the horizon,” said Cosgrove. “Investing in the region’s quality of life amenities is an investment in the future of Webster County. It’s about creating a place where people want to be and builds an environment that recruits and retains a quality workforce.”

According to Cosgrove, conversations about quality of life projects started in 2020 when the county was seeing a 300 percent increase in usage of parks, trails and campgrounds.

“Out of that came an $11 million gift from this board to invest in Webster County’s quality of life,” said Cosgrove.

-Messenger file photo by Bill Shea
A man enjoys the view of the Des Moines River in April 2025 from a new fishing jetty behind the Matt Cosgrove River’s Edge Discovery Center in Fort Dodge.

According to Cosgrove, the funding was provided through tax increment financing (TIF) from tax money coming in from the wind turbine projects and the ag park. Then multiple projects were packaged together which were then submitted for grant funding, including Destination Iowa grants.

That package included partnerships with the City of Fort Dodge for projects on the riverfront , including the Central River District plan. The city removed two dams and had created a master plan for the area by the river to make it more accessible to the community. By partnering with the city and furthering that plan, the environmental education facility, now named the Matt Cosgrove River’s Edge Discovery Center, was built.

“It’s been really exciting to see people using the trails and visiting the River’s Edge Discovery Center,” said Cosgrove. “The most impressive part about these projects is the partnerships and collaboration that came together to take the projects from plans to reality. An investment of this size required a lot of partners, and I’m extremely proud and grateful for the people that helped implement this plan.

For the project, the Friends of Webster County Conservation had to raise $500,000 to meet the $4 million Destination Iowa grant, and according to Cosgrove, they raised nearly $600,000, much of which went into the exhibits that can be seen inside.

The second phase of the redevelopment project included the trail work and playscape additions as well as the eagle sculpture that sits outside of the Discovery Center. Cosgrove said he is hoping to add additional stages to the playscape this summer and expand that project, but as other projects went over budget, funding from the playscape was cut.

-Messenger file photo
Kim White, The Natural Naturalist, talks about how bats are able to hang upside down during her Live Bats program on Sept. 27, 2025, at the Matt Cosgrove River’s Edge Discovery Center.

“When we applied for our funding, the city had not started construction on the little dam project, so we were able to capture all of these funds for matching funds as part of the project,” said Cosgrove. “It just made our project even bigger and allowed us to capture more money from that state Destination Iowa grant.”

The projects included the fishing jetties after the dam removal, the hiking and bike plan, as well as a trail connection to Badger, which Cosgrove stated was highly recommended, and two trails in Dayton and Gowrie.

“Dayton and Gowrie are our next population centers for workforce living, so you provided funding for those two communities to create a trail, a local trail committee, and they created a trail master plan for their communities and then implemented the first phase of development in those communities,” Cosgrove told the supervisors.

The five mile extension to Badger sets the county up for a connection to the Three Rivers Trail which is approximately another five miles. According to Cosgrove, his team is working now with Humboldt County on connecting the two.

“That’s 230-plus mile linked trail system,” said Cosgrove. “So you’re 74 miles which puts us, I think, at the fourth largest trail system in Iowa.”

Cosgrove said he has already lined up $750,000 in grant funding for the connection.

He also said that the City of Dayton partnered with the county on a Destination Iowa grant which not only created a local trail system, but also built a community center and also made the top of the arena more handicap accessible for restrooms and getting into the arena.

“Of that $11 million, those projects cost a little over $22 million, and we were able to take your money and leverage it again for another $11 million to complete those projects as we had described in Destination Iowa,” said Cosgrove. “The master plan for our trail projects for Fort Dodge and Webster County are fairly well completed at this point. This would be a nice project to have wrapped up, and then we move into more of a maintenance mode.”