Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Village officials and town residents, including mayor Ed Kolanko and state representative Elgin Rogers Jr., celebrated the grand opening of a new children’s playground at Walbridge’s Railway Park on June 20 with a ribbon cutting ceremony.
“It's going to be an amazing upgrade,” resident Morgan Magnone said. “It's a bigger park. All kids come over here and play. There’s more inclusion now. There's more things for them to do. It's a lot better. I think it's going to be a great addition to the community.”
The process, which started approximately two years ago according to Kolanko, came at a cost of around $475,000, but the village’s general fund only had to pay $60,000 due to help from the state and other sources.
A 32-foot zip line was paid for with the help of a Wood County Park District grant, and the installation process of all the equipment took around four weeks.
“It's huge,” Kolanko said. “I think when people move to a small village, they want to come to a bedroom community that has great parks, that has snow plowing and services that are just the basic needs. This is a great park, (but) the equipment that was here, a lot of it was from the original days when it was built back in the early 1980s. It was time for an upgrade.”
With a goal in mind but realizing the village would need financial help to make it happen, Kolanko collaborated with Rogers.
“When the mayor brought the idea to me, I said, ‘Let's put the numbers together,’” Rogers said. “I was a first-term legislator trying to figure out how to work through this process. And along the way, we got some help.”
Just prior to the official ribbon cutting ceremony, Rogers spoke about the importance of a project like this in a small community like Walbridge, especially for children.
“When you're a kid, you should be able to come here and have all the fun that you want,” he said. “Every time you come here, this should be the most fun that they have. These kids will remember today and the days that they come here. They may not remember the mayor or myself, but it's about these memories that they make here in the village, and it's important for them to make good memories here so they'll come back here and support the village.”
Kolanko was eager to credit Rogers for helping the village through an especially unique process in getting the new equipment. When everything got off the ground, Rogers was the area’s rep, but through redistricting, he was no longer the rep. Despite that, he stayed on board and helped make this project happen.
“I know we don't want to talk politics in today's world,” Kolanko said. “Politics is kind of ugly, but it's not today. When this project took shape, Elgin Rogers was our state rep. When we hear these words in the political world of redistricting and things of that nature, those lines get changed.
“Whether or not we like them, sometimes they get changed. And in this case, it did get changed in the middle of this project. So technically, Elgin is not our state rep today, but he's still here. He saw the project through when he had a choice. He could have walked away, but he helped us out.”
Rogers said the representation for places like Walbridge is important.
“This village, small villages, often don't have the representation that they need in Columbus or across various counties,” he said. “It was very important for me when they reached out to try to do the best I could to help.
“For me this is not just a feather in my cap, but it's dear to my heart because if you look around you see children out here smiling, laughing, and playing. They'll remember these days for the rest of their lives.
“That’s the best part of this. They said there's one thing that you can't give away because it keeps coming back to you. It's called kindness. That's what today is about. I want to thank the mayor for trusting and believing in me in the process, because it was a task he talked about for a few years, and it was an arduous task.
“These things don't happen just overnight.”
Father Michael Bialorucki from St. Jerome’s Catholic Church opened the ceremony with a blessing for the new park.
“Thanks to the village residents for doing their part of being patient in this process,” Kolanko said to the crowd. “There's been a lot of hands that have been part of putting this playground together. Back when we looked at the total cost of this project, (we realized) this is a very significant investment into the village of Walbridge and that our funding relies a lot on the state, the county and different sources.
“One of those areas of funding is through the state capital budget, and we have to utilize our state rep to kind of look at some projects and push those forward. So, we put together the numbers, met with Representative Rogers and kind of started that discussion point.”
One part of the process included approximately 300 Lake Elementary students, who drew pictures of what they would like the playground to look like. Rogers, who came up with that idea, delivered those to his friends at the statehouse to try and move the project along, and Kolanko said he thought it was a big contributing factor to its success.
Looking forward, now that this project is complete, Kolanko believes it could help spur additional growth in the village.
“We’ve actually seen an influx now with some softball and youth baseball groups saying we want to use your fields,” he said. “All of a sudden now, (they’re saying) you got that playground there and we want to do some fellowship at the park.”
Kolanko said there’s even a discussion of adding a third field, as well.
“We actually, with the council’s support, recently bought the building behind us which was basically a vacant building, and we bought some acreage behind us, so there is potential for this park to continue to expand to be kind of a focal part of our community,” he said. “We got some pickleball courts now that we didn't have before. We got a basketball court, we got two fields, we got this beautiful playground, and we're growing.”
