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Village of Castleton-on-Hudson (2018) Print
2018 AARP Community Challenge Grantee
Project Category
Public places
└ Public space activation
└ Public space activation
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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Lebanon, IN
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2022
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: To help older adults attend the dozens of events The Heart of Lebanon stages downtown each year, this project provided seating and personal umbrellas (including ones that can be used as a cane) on-site.
Seattle, WA
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2019
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: To help the Southwest Seattle Senior Center become a safer and more inviting gathering space, organizers with Rebuilding Together Seattle made physical improvements to the facility. This included refurbishing handrails, demolishing a shed and replacing it with expanded ADA-compliant parking for members, repainting the building's faade and sprucing up landscaping. RTS used the project to promote its Open Volunteer Days, attracting people from the community to assist with the work. The Center serves an area of Seattle with the city's highest poverty rates and largest share of low-income residents. Project organizers said they hoped the improvements would help position the Center as a safe haven and community hub.
Surry, ME
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2024
Project Category: Public space activation
Description: This project will create a notice board to display local town and emergency information at the local post office, a regular meeting space. This will specifically benefit older residents who are unable to access information online.
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Bethlehem, NY
AARP Community Challenge Grant Year: 2017
Project Category: Trails
Description: As part of its efforts to bring public art to the Albany County Helderberg-Hudson Rail Trail, the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy created a mural along the trail in the Town of Bethlehem. Project organizers chose a local artist from a pool of applicants to paint the mural, which depicts a surreal landscape and adorns a formerly graffitied wall. Since then, the Art on the Rail Trail (ART) initiative has installed several more murals, as well as a mini art gallery and arts programming. The trail is popular with pedestrians and cyclists in warm weather and cross-county skiers and snowshoe hikers in the winter.
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.
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