CHCA highlights $200,000 tree grant at annual meeting

Posted 6/28/17

by Brendan Sample

With dozens of members gathered together, the Chestnut Hill Community Association held its 69th Annual Membership Meeting on Sunday. Held at the Wissahickon Inn at Springside …

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CHCA highlights $200,000 tree grant at annual meeting

Posted

by Brendan Sample

With dozens of members gathered together, the Chestnut Hill Community Association held its 69th Annual Membership Meeting on Sunday. Held at the Wissahickon Inn at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, the CHCA met to discuss the state of the Association, Chestnut Hill Local and Community Fund, both reflecting on accomplishments from the past year while also looking ahead to the future.

In giving the state of the CHCA, board president Laura Lucas focused on four priorities that had guided the Association’s work over the past year: financial health, residential quality of life, aiding membership efforts and an emphasis on the execution of ideas. Some of the notable highlights in these areas included taking ownership of the Community Fund Drive, winning the appeal against the Evergreen St. parking pad and conducting the Preservation, Conservation and Development Study with the Chestnut Hill Conservancy.

Lucas also spoke about some of the upcoming projects that the CHCA would be involved in, the most notable of which will be the formation of a Chestnut Hill Tree Planting Fund. The Fund is being formed from a $200,000 donation from the Estate of James A. Black Jr., a former Chestnut Hill resident who died in December.

“We have chosen to honor Mr. Black by establishing a new fund that builds upon the community’s work to further our green spaces launched by the Chestnut Hill Community Association in 2012 as well as the long history of green space leadership by the CHCA starting with its visionary plan to plant Ginkos on the Avenue in the 1960s,” Lucas said. “This effort is still taking shape and we have formed an advisory group to help guide us.”

Other endeavors set to take shape in the near future will include getting neighbors together to discuss concerns about the beer garden behind the Chestnut Hill Hotel, assisting the Water Tower Advisory Group with their plans for renovations and launching a new study to help improve parking in the neighborhood. These projects and others will look to be prominent ventures for the CHCA as it approaches its upcoming 70th anniversary next year.

Joel Barras of the Chestnut Hill Local Board of Directors provided the state of the Local, as it has been close to a year since the Board was formally established. With seven members currently serving with one vacancy, Barras confirmed that the Board is still actively looking for a final member and welcomed any suggestions from the community. The Board has also drafted and approved a set of guidelines to clearly outline the Local’s purpose to residents. With recent articles on topics such as the Water Tower renovation plans and Pastorius Park dog attacks generating plenty of discussion, Barras expressed his hope that the Local would continue to be a kind of forum for the community to express its views on various issues.

With a number of major projects planned for both the near and far future, the CHCA certainly made it known at the Annual Meeting that it recognizes the importance of these endeavors. In fact, there was also a specific acknowledgment that these efforts could very well be leading to another critical juncture in the history of the neighborhood.

“In Chestnut Hill’s history, there have been key turning points where deliberate steps have been taken to protect and encourage the kind of community we have come to cherish,” Lucas said. “Seventy years ago, the Chestnut Hill Community Association came into being with the specific purpose of creating guidelines and restoration. The coming years present an opportunity to make decisions that, years from now, will be viewed as another turning point.”

Brendan Sample can be reached at brendan@chestnuthilllocal.com

 

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