InFocus
By Brandon Klein
Parks and Recreation Month
Department leaders reflect on decades of growth
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The Heritage Celebration at Century Village at Fryer Park features the Ohio Village Muffins versus Century Village Greyhounds in an old time baseball game.
14 July/August 2021
Photos courtesy of Grove City Parks and Recreation Department
elly Sutherland says she struggles to explain what she does as Grove City’s parks and recreation superintendent. “There’s so much that we do,” she says. The department is involved in a huge number of city activities, so even the most involved Grove City resident might not know all that Sutherland and her team have played a part in creating. As the department celebrates National Parks and Recreation Month in July, its leaders reflect on the department’s growth over the last 30 years. Since the city established a Parks and Recreation Department with a director and staff in 1973 replacing the parks department set up in 1966 under the guidance of a park board, it has grown in terms of staff, programming, facilities and operations, says Kim Conrad, director of the Grove City Parks and Recreation Department, who has been with the department since the 1980s. Not only does it interact with many local government departments and programs, it offers something for everyone. “We do everything from, I want to say, from cradle to Kids go down the slide at Gantz Park. grave with people in our community,” Conrad says.
www.DiscoverGroveCity.com
