Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers held a groundbreaking in Ottawa this week for its planned $17.2 million medical office building. The two-story, roughly 22,900-square-foot facility will sit on the east side of Columbus Street just north of Norris Drive. Plans call for a diagnostic center, lab, imaging and cardiac testing services, plus offices for doctors in several specialties with up to 30 exam rooms. It is the hospital system's biggest expansion in Ottawa since it arrived in 2012. Completion is targeted for early spring 2028, and the existing Gemini Circle site will stay open.
Anyone hoping to take welding classes at Illinois Valley Community College next spring needs to attend an information session first. Two sessions are scheduled on the Oglesby campus in room CTC 123: Oct. 27 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m., and Oct. 30 from 5 to 7 p.m. Students will meet with the welding program coordinator to pick courses before registering. New students must already have applied to IVCC and have a student ID. Seats are limited, so pre-registration by phone is required. No welding experience is needed, and class registration opens Oct. 28.
The LaSalle County Board has decided the county itself will hold certificates for unpaid property taxes, rather than selling them to private buyers at the annual tax sale. The change covers 2025 taxes payable in 2026. The county will charge 0.75% interest a month, which could make it cheaper for property owners to clear their tax debts than under the old private-sale system. Separately, the county estimates it could owe as much as $4 million to former owners who lost property through tax sales, after a new Illinois law aligned the state with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on surplus equity.
A La Salle County grand jury met Tuesday and indicted an 18-year-old Streator man on four felony counts tied to an Oct. 14 traffic stop by Streator police. Officers say they found two guns in the stop: a .380 pistol with an altered serial number and a homemade, unserialized "ghost gun" fitted with a laser sight. The charges include defacing a firearm's identification marks, two counts of having a gun without a FOID card, and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon for allegedly being armed while under an order of protection. Prosecutors say earlier video links him to the ghost gun. His arraignment is set for Oct. 29. The same grand jury also returned indictments against more than two dozen other people from around the area.
A woman was hurt Thursday morning when her minivan went off Route 71 just east of Starved Rock State Park and ended up in a ditch. La Salle County sheriff's deputies and Grand Ridge firefighters were called to the single-vehicle crash at about 5:30 a.m. The driver suffered injuries to her face and was taken by ambulance to OSF in Ottawa. No other vehicles were reported to be involved, and no cause for the crash was given in the initial report.
