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Gassaway, WV
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2024
Project Category: Trails
Description: This project will provide benches at approximately one-mile intervals along a trail. The new seating will join a dozen newly added benches, which have proven popular with older hikers.
Homer, AK
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2019
Project Category: Trails
Description: To welcome visitors of all abilities, the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust installed large-font signage on its Poopdeck Platt property. Part of long-term efforts to create an accessible trail on the site, the signs display QR codes, which link to recordings of local people reading the sign text accompanied by soothing music. The park is in downtown Homer, and the trail connects Homer's Independent Living Center to nearby Bishop's Beach. Today, the property is home to a story walk and the local library has plans to expand the trail, with a focus on local indigenous history. Since installing the signposts, the Land Trust has referenced their design to inspire signage at kiosks along other trails.
Bethel, VT
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2018
Project Category: Trails
Description: Many amenities in Bethel are only accessible by car. To encourage active transportation instead, the Town created a path for walking, biking and cross-country skiing. The multiuse trail runs from the town's elementary school to the town's new outdoor recreation area. Organizers hope the new path helps residents reach several upgraded recreational facilities nearby, including a new pool house and skate park. Spurred by the pathway's popularity, the Town is exploring ways to construct connector pathways to expand the trail network. By encouraging people to walk, organizers say the multiuse path will support Bethels economy, connecting pedestrians to local businesses.
Nearby AARP Community Challenge Projects
Bethlehem, NY
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2018
Project Category: Trails
Description: The Mohawk Land Conservancy's Art on the Rail Trail sponsors art installations along the Albany County Helderberg-Hudson Rail Trail. The trail is popular with pedestrians and cyclists in warm weather and cross-country skiers and snowshoe hikers in the winter. To promote walking and biking, the Conservancy benches along the pathway and made repairs. Additionally, a new mural transformed a graffitied wall facing Hudson Avenue into a lush and pristine world of imagined creatures, according to artist Andrea Hersch.
Castleton-on-Hudson, NY
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2018
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: The Village of Castleton-on-Hudson regularly hosts a Repair Cafe event, where volunteers repaired any item brought to them, if possible. One problem: the event takes place on the second floor of a Village Hall, which has no elevator. This posed an accessibility issue -- locals often complained about climbing the building's difficult staircase. To solve this, the Village moved its Repair Cafe to Noyes Engine House. They also worked to activate a vacant lot next door, installing a community bulletin board, benches and planters onsite. The improvements support wider efforts to revitalize the village's downtown, with the goal of drawing more people to the central business district.
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