Malcolm Reid probably would have gotten along swimmingly with Daniel H. Burnham, he of the “make no little plans” approach to life.
Make a 40-million-gallon aquarium? Sink a 95-foot fuselage from a junked plane in the middle of a Lake Barrington lake and rig it with lights so divers can play an aquatic game of chess or backgammon? Sew together a blanket more than four football fields long and another football field wide? No worries, mate.
“When people tell me something can’t be done, that’s when I get to work. I take the attitude that there’s always a solution,” said Reid, a Cary resident and the brawn and brains behind the Lake Barrington Watersports Center, a converted gravel quarry also known as Pepper Lake.
Opened in 1994, the 15-acre dive park with its 6-acre lake is certainly unique to northern Illinois.
“With all the divers in the Chicago area, we felt the market was there,” Reid said. “And I had a good feeling about Pepper Lake the first time I came out here. I knew that with just a little help, it had the potential to become a premier dive facility.”
Reid is a guy with lots of energy and creative ideas, and he’s using both to create a scuba diving facility that’s attracting divers from throughout the Midwest.
Along with certified scuba divers who use the watersports center on their own for $10 per person, the facility also attracts a number of dive shops that conduct scuba training classes there. The center is also a popular spot for area water rescue safety teams to practice their skills.
And in case you’re wondering how many scuba divers there are around here, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors reports that Illinois has the fourth highest number of divers, following California, Florida and Texas, even though there’s a scarcity of dive sites in the Chicago area.
“Sure, there’s water all over around here, but it’s hard to find a good diving facility. And that’s what Malcolm’s creating: the perfect place for scuba divers to do what they love to do,” said Don Milliken, who conducts diving classes at Lake Barrington and who with his wife, Linda, owns Above and Under Water in Hoffman Estates. “Lake Barrington has been a real asset to the diving community in Illinois.”
According to Claude Jewell, director of the Illinois Institute of Diving in Glen Ellyn, “The only way Malcolm Reid could improve on Lake Barrington would be to put a dome over it. It’s a fantastic body of water for divers.”
Along with scuba diving, Reid also offers aqua adventure programs for kids and adults that include instruction in windsurfing, sailing, canoeing, snorkeling, fishing and ocean kayaking, along with safety sessions. He also makes the lake available for triathletes, who can get their swimming workouts in open water.
The uninitiated might think all that’s needed for scuba diving is a body of water. The problem is that the underwater visibility in most area lakes and ponds is extremely poor. And even at the gravel quarries popular among divers–in Joliet, Racine, Wis., and Beloit, Wis.–the water is stirred up so much by mid-morning on a busy day that visibility is murky at best.
That’s where Reid’s idea comes into play. He put together a team and stitched together a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved fabric that lines the lake and catches silt. How did Reid install the huge piece of fabric? He’s not saying. “That’s a secret I’d rather keep to myself,” he said.
But no matter how he did it, the result is a practically silt-free lake that provides good visibility throughout the day. Adding to the visibility is the fact that the gravel quarry was dug into a shallow water aquifer, which provides for a natural water filtration system. “The aquifer is like an underground river that flows very slowly,” Reid said. “It’s one of Mother Nature’s gems.”
The lake’s depth of 30 feet provides two more advantages. The sun’s rays reach the bottom of the lake, providing for natural lighting. And with its relatively shallow depth, the sun keeps the water nice and warm, which is more comfortable for divers.
John Kreisedar of Fox River Valley Gardens has been diving for 15 years, and he’s a regular at Lake Barrington. “Nobody’s gone to this extent to get water so clear, and Malcolm’s pulled off what he set out to do,” he said. “At most diving spots around here, the water gets like chocolate milk by 9 in the morning. Not out here. And Lake Barrington has things like locker rooms that divers appreciate.”
What makes diving fun are underwater diversions. Reid has created several dive sites, and his subterranean playground includes a 1950s Convair 600 airliner (the Lady Barrington) he got from a DuPage Airport salvage yard, a circa 1955 S-58 Sikorsky helicopter, six boats, the fuselage of a Lear jet and, coming this summer, a Grumman G-1 airliner, complete with wings. Lake Barrington also has a plentiful supply of largemouth bass, bluegill, crappie, catfish, turtles and frogs.
Improvements this year include an erosion control program, a paved access road along the northern edge of the lake, the air-conditioned Aqua Cafe, which features items such as angel hair pasta and Cajun chicken breasts, lakeside food and drink service, and air tank rentals, with a golf cart as the delivery vehicle, and an underwater video setup, where friends and family can sit in the Aqua Cafe and watch their favorite diver in the middle of the lake. Coming next year are five wind machines that will produce winds up to 20 m.p.h. for wind surfers, to be used on those days when Mother Nature won’t cooperate.
Reid said beginning this year, the cafe will be open year-round, and he also plans to have cross-country skiing and ice skating facilities set up this winter.
Greg Topczewski of Palatine started diving 18 years ago as a former member of the Chicago Police Marine Unit. “Malcolm’s done an amazing job with Lake Barrington,” he said. “The best way I can describe my feelings is that, being a diver, I used to say that if I won the lottery I would create the ideal diving facility. Now I say that if I win the lottery, I’ll just come and hang out at Lake Barrington every day.”
So how did Reid, 38, wind up as the founder of the Lake Barrington Watersports Center? He was born in Long Beach, Calif., and he and his brother Whit and his sister Alison grew up in the Pacific Ocean. “Our mom and dad, Sylvia and William, got us in the water at a very early age, and safety was always stressed,” Reid said. “Our parents would conduct simulated safety lessons, such as knowing what to do when you flip a sailboat.”
Reid graduated in 1979 with a journalism degree from the University of Utah, where he also competed on the swim team. He worked as a writer for the Utah Division of Highway Safety for a short time, then returned to his roots, working as a Los Angeles County lifeguard, a real life “Baywatcher.” Then it was off to Garmisch, Germany, where he worked as a ski instructor during the winter and worked on sailboats cruising the Mediterranean in the summer. It was there that he learned how to scuba dive and wind surf.
Reid returned to the States in 1982 and taught skiing at Steamboat Springs, Colo., during the winter and worked for Steamboat’s travel marketing department in Chicago during the summer. That’s where he met his wife, Lynette, at a ski show. He then worked as the food and beverage director at Embassy Suites O’Hare, followed by a stint at a Chicago television production company, compiling feature stories for airing on cable TV business programs.
“I interviewed a number of successful CEOs at companies like Brunswick, Ethan Allen and Harley-Davidson, and they provided me with a dose of inspiration to try something on my own,” Reid said. “They’d tell me about customer service and studying the market and creating something from nothing, and it got me thinking.”
The light bulb went off one day in 1993, when he was scuba diving at Pepper Lake, a gravel quarry that was an unofficial diving spot. When the silt kicked up, he couldn’t see his dive partner. That’s what started his brainstorming, and he began working on the project early the following year. He leased the property, and Lake Barrington opened for business late in the summer of 1994.
“It’s funny how my life led to this point,” Reid said. “Lake Barrington is the accumulation of a lot of experience and interests coming together for me. I’ve been scuba diving for years, I enjoy teaching, water safety has always been important to me, and I have experience in the hospitality industry, which helps with the Aqua Cafe. We’re proud of what we’ve been able to pull off so far. And while Lake Barrington will never be the Bahamas, for the Midwest, I’d say we’re doing pretty good.”
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Lake Barrington Watersports Center is at 22221 N. Pepper Rd., Lake Barrington, one-half mile north of Northwest Highway. Call 847-381-9440.
