Over 1,700 affected in La Salle power outage

A broken ground wire is to blame for a power outage that left over 1,700 people in the dark last night in La Salle.

The outage started over the 7 o’clock hour and was caused by a wire breaking loose and hitting other wires at a substation south of Canal Street, according to Victoria Bush, a spokeswoman with Ameren.

Most of La Salle south of 9^th street was affected by the outage, including the entire downtown.

Power was restored around 10:30, with Ameren confirming full service restoration to all customers shortly after 11.

National recognition for Starved Rock Lodge

When you here a line like “here, in this quiet warm-toned lodge, with a crack to heaven, there is the kind of repose that inspires poets and dreamers”, you probably think it’s from a novel. It’s actually part of a Huffington Post review of Starved Rock Lodge.

Travel Writer Richard Bangs visited the lodge and park in Utica and came away impressed. In his article of the best hotels in the world, he put the lodge at number 3 behind a castle in Ireland and a hotel in Slovenia.

When talking about the lodge, Bangs was impressed with the rustic rooms, locally-crafted furniture, and picture windows that “peer into the lusty stealth of Nature”.

You can find the entire review by clicking Starved Rock Lodge Huff Post Review

Congressman Kinzinger likes Bush, not Trump for president

Will you be watching the next Republican Debate? Adam Kinzinger will be.

The United States Congressman was at Illinois Valley Community College Tuesday for a small business seminar. Kinzinger says candidates need to just be themselves and be leaders.

As for Donald Trump, Kinzinger said he doesn’t think someone as divisive as Trump is the person the Republican Party should be putting forward. Kinzinger has endorsed Jeb Bush for the Republican nomination.

OSF joins partnership studying a new Rec center for Ottawa

If a community Rec center is eventually built in Ottawa, OSF Healthcare wants to be part of it.

The hospital has decided to partner with Ottawa High School, the Ottawa Y and the city to pay for a feasibility study to see if a Rec center makes sense for Ottawa. A previous agreement included just the city, the Y and the high school. Each group agrees to pay a quarter of the $39,000 it’ll take for a Florida consulting firm to do the feasibility study.

The idea of a community Rec center has been talked about for awhile according to Commissioner James Less. However discussions ramped up after the swimming pool at Ottawa High School was closed due to structural issues.

The pool is over a hundred years old and it could cost over a million dollars to fix.

Rash of catalytic converter thefts hit Peru

As it turns out, La Salle isn’t the only city dealing with catalytic converters being stolen.

The Peru Police Department is also looking into at least six different cases where the converters were cut from cars earlier this week. In Peru, the parts were all stolen in residential neighborhoods and from General Motors model cars. La Salle Police are also investigating catalytic converter thefts which happened Sunday night into Monday morning.

If you have any information about the crimes, call the La Salle or Peru PD or Illinois Valley Crime Stoppers.