St. Charles' new sensory garden will be a place for everyone

The St. Charles Park District may have to hold off on allowing a bunch of children at the same time into a new sensory garden and inclusive playground area until after the pandemic has subsided, but in the meantime it will still be a safe outdoor option with rules in place. As such, park district officials can look forward to this spring with a sense of excitement.

They'll have their calendars marked for Memorial Day weekend, targeting those days for a grand opening and ribbon cutting of the new sensory garden and inclusive playground currently under construction at Pottawatomie Park.

It's been on the park district comprehensive plan radar for some time, with the idea coming about from the annual "A Day in the Park" hosted by the St. Charles Park District at Pottawatomie in which seven area park districts that feed into Fox Valley Special Recreation Association send all of their day campers to the park for the day.

"The really cool thing is that all of the special rec kids are in all of the same activities as the other day-camp kids on that day," said Laura Rudow, superintendent of parks and planning at St. Charles Park District. "You see this awesome day of inclusivity, and kids helping other kids and meeting other people and learning about their challenges."

In noticing all of the positive results from the park districts - Oswego, Sugar Grove, Aurora, Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles and South Elgin - bringing kids together for such an important day, Rudow said her staff started thinking about how to have a site for this type of interaction to take place on a regular basis.

"We had this old, dilapidated Safety Town setup in Pottawatomie that hadn't been used in years, as we haven't had a Safety Town in almost 20 years," Rudow said. "So, we figured Pottawatomie is our most highly visited park and attracts more than 100,000 people every year. If an inclusive playground was going to get the bang for the buck and be beloved and used, it had to be in Pottawatomie."

It wasn't so much an idea to have an ADA playground for special-needs kids, but to have an ADA site that could be used by everyone, Rudow explained. "It would be something any of the park districts could use for their day camp," she added.

When completed, the new park, which is just north of the park's riverfront shelter and pavilion tower, will include a musical play area, log steppers, a vine tunnel, Baggo games, and picnic pavilion to go with the playground and sensory garden.

The park district received a $250,000 grant from the Department of Natural Resources through the Open Space Land Acquisition and Development Grant. The money will help pay E. Hoffman Construction, which is overseeing the project.

"Even if big groups or rentals can't be happening in the new playground because of the pandemic, we still have to offer safe outside activities," Rudow said. "And the playground falls into that category."

More burgers

When I worked on the east side of St. Charles for several years, an occasional stop at DeGeo's for a burger was almost always a good idea.

DeGeo's closed about a year ago now, but I'm not on that side of town too often, so the restaurant seemed to sort of slip out of town without me noticing.

It was good to see that Tony Gargano and Marshall McCarty, owners of The Burger Shop in Geneva, opened an extension at the former DeGeo's spot at 2704 E. Main St.

A restaurant network can be interesting when certain owners spread their wings into other local operations. That's what is happening here; Gargano also owns Osteria Bigolaro and McCarty owns The Walrus Room, both along State Street in downtown Geneva.

They decided to partner on The Burger Shop concept because it was a good option for both during the pandemic as a smaller operation with a likely more devoted carryout customer base.

As I noted when first writing about The Burger Shop in Geneva last April, these are really good pub-style burgers. Nothing particularly fancy, or expensive, but that's kind of the idea behind the "shop" concept.

More carryouts

The Geneva Chamber of Commerce continues its "carryout challenge" through the end of the month, in which you post on social media that you purchased a carryout meal from a Geneva restaurant.

You use the hashtag #GenevaCarryOutChallenge and tag two friends and the restaurant, urging those friends to do the same at their favorite restaurants.

Everyone who participates gets a chance at a drawing for $100 in Geneva gift certificates.

I'm usually too hungry to fiddle around with posting on social media about what I am picking up at a restaurant. But hopefully others aren't quite as lazy and are motivated by the potential prize - and, of course, the support for local restaurants.

I tend to spread my carryout loyalty across the Tri-Cities, but Geneva restaurants have certainly been in that mix. For what it's worth, or maybe for a few ideas to participate in the Geneva Chamber contest, I have picked up food from these Geneva sites - Sergio's Cantina, The Burger Shop, McAlister's Deli, Deane's Market & Deli, Country House, Craft Urban and Aurelio's Pizza the past few months.

He's a river man

Before getting fully engrossed in 2021, I want to be sure to clear my notebook of things that shouldn't pass without a mention.

The River Corridor Foundation presenting John Rabchuk with its 2020 Golden Turtle Award for his lifetime contribution to the city is one of those notes.

Rabchuk has been active in so many service, planning and downtown business organizations, the list might fill this page. But to understand the award, one must know that he has been on the board of directors of the River Corridor Foundation of St. Charles for more than a decade.

He's been in most of the leadership roles and vitally important in forever changing the river banks in the downtown area with the Bob Leonard Walkway and working with the Pottawatomie Garden Club to keep the plants along the walkway looking nice.

The park benches and the impressive "But if I Could Fly" statue have Rabchuk's fingerprints all over them.

Mostly, this fellow never stops thinking about what will make St. Charles even more beautiful than it is along its portion of the Fox River.

If we didn't have people like John Rabchuk thinking like that, we'd definitely notice - and the sense of pride so many of us have about living in this area would be diminished.

• dheun@sbcglobal.net