Ottawa Recreation’s summer partnership with Grand Ridge, Marseilles succeeds

Ottawa Recreation had some challenges heading into the summer with Riordan Pool being closed but a partnership with Grand Ridge ended up being a catalyst for another partnership — one with Marseilles.

Playground and Recreation Director Dave Marvin had already facilitated a partnership with Grand Ridge to help take advantage of the village’s city park by creating events and supervised park programming for the summer.

His idea started in 2019 before the pandemic when he brought up offering participation in Ottawa Recreation’s programming to Grand Ridge in exchange for a fee to retired Director Mark Astle, who pointed out Naplate had previously participated in that same manner.

Marvin then presented the idea to Grand Ridge, which showed interest until COVID-19 hit. Talks didn’t resurface until February of this year.

“I know personally from living in Grand Ridge, there’s a ton of kids and they have a really nice park there,” Marvin said. “I went to a village board meeting and they thought it was a great idea.”

This led to another idea: Ottawa would be without a pool for the summer season, so Marvin contacted the Marseilles City Council to see about creating the same kind of partnership.

“I remember back to my days as a kid in Grand Ridge, we used to get a free day of swimming at the Streator City Pool on Wednesday mornings,” Marvin said. “Imagine it being the 70s. A parent loads all of us kids in the back of their truck and takes us for a morning swim from like, 8 a.m. until noon. It was free or like, a buck. Really cheap. You know how cool we thought that was?”

Marvin approached the Marseilles City Council to ask how much they’d charge to use the pool on Mondays over the summer for six hours.

“We started talking and they asked a little more about our parks program and came up with an idea to swap services,” Marvin said. “We supplied employees for supervised parks and special events and they supplied a free pool on Monday. To me, that’s a win-win.”

Marvin said he was happy with the partnership Ottawa had with Marseilles and he would gladly work with the city in the future.

Ottawa Recreation runs camps and programs all summer, from basketball camps, cheer camps and art camps for children and dance lessons for adults, along with recreational softball leagues. For more information, go to ottawarecreation.org.