ashlandcurb
Volunteers from the Ashland Park Neighborhood Association (APNA) have banded together on a beautification project at the intersection of South Ashland Avenue and High Street, which has brought an attractively landscaped plot and freshly painted traffic electric box to the southwest corner.
In August neighbors got together to first paint the traffic box Keeneland green with a special “anti-graffiti” paint, said APNA President Tony Chamblin, and later landscape the area around the box within the city right-of-way. He said according to 5th District Council Member Bill Farmer, Jr.’s office, this was the first such initiative of its kind between a neighborhood association and the city, and the project took more than a year to receive final approval from various government offices.
“It was a really long, involved process,” Chamblin said. “There was a certain amount of bureaucracy involved, but we finally succeeded.”
Ashland Park neighbor Bill Henkel, owner of the landscape design firm Henkel-Denmark, provided the design plan at no cost the organization, and Lisa Myers, who had the original idea for the project, will coordinate volunteers who will be responsible for the maintenance. Myers has also been responsible for collecting donations from neighbors to help fund the project.
Chamblin said if the organization can secure the funding, they would like to see the corner on the opposite side of the street receive similar treatment, and that they would be happy to share their insights to other neighborhood associations that might be interested in a similar endeavor in their part of town.
“Anything that’s going to beautify the city, certainly that’s something that we would favor and we would be glad to share with anybody the process,” he said.