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POUND RIDGE, N.Y. Members of the fledgling Pound Ridge Partnership, which was formed last year to help aesthetically improve the Scotts Corner business district and inspired volunteerism, say its projects are starting to have impact.
The groups says that thanks to its events like Pound Ridge Pride Day and the recent Harvest Festival more shoppers are being drawn into the diminutive business district on Westchester Avenue and shop owners, government officials, and community members are bonding together to help make improvements
The unity that has developed through the recent Harvest Festival and Pound Ridge Pride of last June is palpable, said Sue Grissom, co-chair of Pound Ridge Partnerships beautification and communication committees. Residents, business owners and members of local community organizations and government have developed the special bond that results from working together on a project they value.
Grissom said by drawing more people into the business district, the groups goal of promoting local business is being met. For example, people from neighboring communities came to the Harvest Fest where the sampled cheeses from Plum Plums cheese shop, food from Dinardos and Panellas and checked out wines at Marielas Wine Bar.
One of my neighbors, a long-time resident, stopped me and said, this is just what the town needed. Some new, fun events to draw us together, said Terri Pike, the other co-chair of the beautification and communication committee.
Grissom and Pike said that families looking for ways to get involved and meet together in town have benefited from the groups work. Children and young teenagers members of Pound Ridge Partnership Kids spoke up at their first meeting last year to ask for more events like the Halloween Walk. Within the year those same kids and their friends and families could be seen in town during Pound Ridge Pride, sanding and painting signs and planting flowers. Later that day they were participating in pie-eating contests and hula-hoop contests or jumping in the bouncy castle.
The growth of volunteerism is particularly gratifying, said Ali Boak, one of the groups founders. Grissom said that the work and support from an array of community organizations made those events not only fun, but gave ownership to their members as they worked with the Pound Ridge Partnership to participate. Unification, pride, revitalization and community are all words that the Partnership associates with 2011, she said.
The challenge the group now faces is how to make 2012 even better. The group has performed surveys and solicited feedback from business owners to find out. Profits from Pound Ridge Partnership events go towards it efforts to beautify the town. Its next effort is called the Petals for Pound Ridge Project, where boxes and baskets and boxes of flowers will be set up throughout Scotts Corners. Organizers hope to launch the project soon.
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