BERLIN — After five years of steady, incremental growth, the Berlin Farmers Market may soon be taking its first major step toward becoming the transformed centerpiece in an all-in-one public park and market complex at the east Cullman County town.

At its January regular meeting Monday, Mayor Patrick Bates shared with the Berlin Town Council preliminary drawings that show how the market, located alongside U.S. Highway 278 on the town’s west side, could soon be home to a new 120’ x 120’ vendors’ pavilion with upgraded accommodations for local growers who sell their produce at the site each year, supported by new public restroom facilities, playground and picnic areas, and an asphalt-covered parking area with space for more than 100 vehicles.

Designed by Cullman’s St. John & Associates, the reimagined market and park would remain located at the current farmers market site, with the pavilion and parking area marking the first new-construction step in a series of phased new additions. The playground and other recreational amenities would likely come later; so, too, would additional amenities including a walking trail, once the town has a firmer idea of whether, and how, a possible statewide walking trail project might pass through the property as part of a larger, legislative-funded initiative through the still-evolving Sweet Trails Alabama project.

Nothing in the current plan is final, as the town prepares to solicit bids whose cost will determine the feasibility of constructing the pavilion and parking lot as they’re currently designed. But Bates and the council have been planning major changes to the site as the market’s popularity has grown with each passing year, eyeing optimal ways to make use of the municipal-owned property as one part of a civic area that also encompasses the nearby town hall site, which lies just north and east of the market across County Road 1615.

One big addition already is in the works for the property on the town hall side of CR 1615, as the council prepares to take delivery next month for the outer shell of Berlin’s first community storm shelter. The shelter will be located on land that adjoins the town hall, with current plans calling for the construction of two new concrete pedestals there — one to accommodate the single new shelter, which is expected to be in place sometime this March, the other for the possible placement of a second shelter that the town may purchase sometime in the future.