The Colonial Hills Civic Association

The CHCA 4th of July Event Chairs and some other volunteers have been planning the multitude of activities for 2025. But our activities will not happen without your volunteering to help out!

So, if you haven’t already volunteered, please volunteer now as follows for one or both of these areas:

1) Click our SignUpGenius link https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F49A4A82FA7FACF8-57185290-colonial#/ for the midway and related activities – games (classic and new), bounce houses, slip ‘n’ slide, dunk tank, setup and cleanup

and/or

2) Email Jeff Spain jspain01@cscc.edu to volunteer for helping with the 5K Run Through the Hills (please see the separate 5K Volunteers blogpost for specific activities you can help Jeff and Courtney with).

*** ***

Registration for the 5K Race is now open! To run/walk in the race, you can register online, or you can print, fill out and mail in the PDF registration form Run Through the Hills 5K Entry Form – 2025 – mail to the CHCA, P.O. Box 676, Worthington, OH 43085.

*** ***

The overall schedule for all events for the 4th of July is:

• 8:30 AM Sharp! – Start of the 46th Annual 5K “Run Through the Hills”
• 10:00 AM – Kiddie Parade – Circles Selby Park
• 10:30 AM – The midway games, bounce houses, food services and more will open for all to enjoy. Purchase your midway activities wristbands before the parade to avoid the lines!
• Around Noon to Maybe 1:00 PM – Depends on how hot it is! – End of activities – But don’t be late!

For those of you new to our neighborhood, please see the blogpost recapping the 2024 4th of July. You will see that you will be enjoying a fun, festive celebration for everyone in the neighborhood – games, food, decorations, and the great company of everyone having a fun time!

Note: Teens, and especially rising seniors – you could volunteer for more than one activity over the period of the 3rd and 4th and thus get your two events credits for the CHCA scholarship! For instance, you could volunteer for setup and/or cleanup plus one shift for the midway and/or contact Jeff Spain for volunteering for the 5K. Don’t be disappointed at the last minute that you have not met the minimum 2-events qualification for scholarship consideration during your senior year! And also, try to attend a CHCA meeting this summer before your hectic senior year schedule kicks in – the meetings are the second Tuesday of the month at 7:30 PM at the Selby shelter house, so why not attend in either July, August or September?

Boundless has requested that the Colonial Hills Civic Association (CHCA) publicize that there will be a meeting Thursday, June 19, at 6:00 PM in the gymnasium on the Boundless campus, 445 E. Dublin Granville Rd, regarding Elford previewing plans for development of the purchased Boundless property, and has requested that we provide the following information:

In their first meeting with our community (January 31, 2025), Elford stated they intend to build Class A, multi-family housing, and that they would host a second meeting to present and discuss the first version of their final plans. Detailed notes from the first meeting are available on both the Colonial Hills and the CHAT Facebook sites.

This second meeting will be the first time we will see what they are actually planning. Given the potential impact of higher density housing on our community, you may be interested in attending, listening carefully, and sharing your opinion.

Directions to the meeting: head to the Boundless administration building (to the right of the Health Center when you drive in), and Boundless will have greeters at the door to lead you to the gym.

For reference:
Class A properties are commonly defined as brand new state-of-the-art and catering to a wealthier clientele. They feature full amenities that are almost resort-like, and the units typically have the latest in-home technology. They are some of the most expensive apartments in their market. Amenities can be tangible, like swimming pools and fitness centers, or intangible, such as pleasant views and access to good public transport.

All Colonial Hills residents are invited to host their own garage sales on Saturday, June 14, starting at 9:00 AM, and e-mail their participation to the coordinator Rachael Dorothy at RachaelRDorothy@gmail.com.

Or, you can sign up online using the Google form but please e-mail Rachael or sign up online by the deadline of June 7, in order to have your place listed on the neighborhood map of garage sale locations and receive a garage sale helper pack from this event’s sponsor CYMACK Real Estate.

Please note: Sellers will be responsible for obtaining their own free Garage Sale permit from the city of Worthington: www.worthington.org/596/Garage-Sale-Permits.

A list of homes hosting a garage sale will be communicated the week of the sale online and via a list available at the Selby Park Shelter House.

Post Garage Sale Donation Pick Up: A Volunteers of America (VOA) truck will be parked at Colonial Hills Elementary School (CHES) June 14th, 2:00pm-4:30pm, the day of the Garage Sale, to pick up your unsold items. Just last year, our neighborhood loaded 2,000 lbs of donations into the truck! So good luck with your garage sale, but remember you can then head over afterwards to CHES for a feel-good charitable donation!

The Run Through the Hills 5K has been a beloved tradition in Colonial Hills for decades. If you’re not planning to run or walk this year, we’d love for you to join us as a volunteer!

We’re looking for enthusiastic helpers for:

• Course setup and preparation
• Packet pickup (July 3 and the morning of the race)
• Water stops along the route
• Post-race tear down and cleanup

This is a great way to support your community, cheer on friends and neighbors, and be part of an unforgettable Fourth of July morning.

Interested? Email Jeff Spain at jspain01@cscc.edu to learn more and sign up. Let’s make this year’s event the best yet!

Please join the CHCA in congratulating our two 2025 Scholarship Winners!

• Sean Miroslaw ($4,000)
• Griffin Royse ($3,000)

Details for their exemplary records of service to the community will be published in the June edition of the Courier. Until then, please enjoy the photos below of our CHCA Secretary Brittany Smith presenting their scholarships to them at the Thomas Worthington HS Local Scholarship Ceremony held at the McConnell Arts Center, May 16, 2025.

And a special thank-you to sponsor The Roof Detective who very generously donated one thousand dollars to our scholarship awards for 2025!

Left: Sean Miroslaw and Brittany Smith. Right: Griffin Royse and Brittany Smith.
Photo Credit: Thomas Worthington HS.

Have you ever been present at the Easter Egg Hunt and seen the hundreds of eggs? Perhaps you were a lucky winner of the sweet prize baskets? Well those eggs don’t stuff themselves and despite the cost of eggs going up, we at the Colonial Hills Civic Association are firm believers of “the more the merrier.” Thanks to generous sponsors Meacham Real Estate Company and Equitable Mortgage Corporation, we can still swing it. BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP!

So this is a reminder that we need volunteers on Saturday April 5, starting at 10am, to stuff Easter eggs for the hunt. It should only take an hour in stuffing plastic eggs with candy, stickers, etc., and in building Easter baskets. And if you have already-filled specialty baskets to donate, we would love to have them!

If the pure joy of it is not enough for you, coffee, hot chocolate and donuts will be provided for volunteers. This is also an EGGSELENT opportunity for high school students to get their volunteer hours in for next year’s scholarship!

And when you’re there helping, please be sure to thank Kathi Godber for chairing this event since 2016, and for the many memories she has helped create for so many kids in the neighborhood! She is retiring from this after this year, so expect her to go out with a bang during the stuffing event and for the hunt itself the following Saturday.

Hope to see you there at 10am, Saturday, April 5, at the Shelter House in Selby Park!

The total amount of money estimated to be paid out for NIL deals (Name, Image and Likeness) in the NCAA for the 2024-25 school year is $1.67 billion. If you are getting that money, you can skip applying for the CHCA scholarship. But if you are among us mere mortals, the CHCA scholarship is nothing to sneeze at. The CHCA has awarded over $5,000 dollars the last three years and looks to continue that streak with our 2025 Scholarship award.

What do you need to do to get in on the action? Just apply, dear neighbors, apply. The completed application MUST be received by April 4 and you can download the application in MS Word format here or find the PDF format here (or use the links at the right). You can deliver your application either in person, or to be received via the CHCA e-mail address CHCA.worthington@gmail.com.

For the volunteer requirement, there are MANY opportunities coming up during this spring season, as shown in our calendar of events. DON’T MISS OUT! If you cannot make a volunteer date already set up, see a CHCA officer to talk about how you can fulfill via a neighborhood project! Make sure you enjoy the JOY of being part of this neighborhood community… and get a little something extra if you are headed into a continuing education program!

Almost 100 guests joined us inside Selby shelter house this December for our neighborhood holiday party! There were games, prizes, sugar consumption, and even Santa ! Thank you to our sponsor — Mullen Hawkins for supporting this fun tradition in the neighborhood, we could not have done this event without you!

Thank you also to the high school volunteers who helped with games, and Shauna, Leslie, and Will, my awesome adult helpers who were definitely on my Nice List this year.

Erin Zelinski Righter
Holiday Party Chair

(And now for the photos (Photo Credit: CHCA Webmaster) – please click the “Continue reading” link below to see these pics which have the following descriptions)

_01 Holiday Party #1
_02 Holiday Party #2
_03 Holiday Party #3
_04 Holiday Party #4
_05 Holiday Party #5
_06 Holiday Party #6
_07 Holiday Party #7

Our rare and renowned entire-neighborhood luminary display does not happen by magic, although viewing all our streets and their holiday decorations on Luminary Display Night does seem magical! Our neighborhood display has been confirmed by a longstanding resident to go back to at least 1970 when they moved to Colonial Hills — and year after year, generation after generation, our residents make this display possible with their volunteering and participation.

So, for this year, I want to greatly thank each of our 29 adult and 13 youth volunteers, some of whom are shown in the photos, and who completed assembly of 902 kits for our 826 homes at 10:50 AM, one of the fastest times on record. And a big thanks to our Trustees (many of whom also volunteered for kit assembly) who picked up their bundles of kits for their districts, and then delivered their kits to each resident in their district.

And a shout out to two volunteers for their special work this year: to Al Symth, who for the 11th year in a row, delivered bundles of kits to the homes of trustees who were not able to pick up their bundles by 1:00 PM Saturday afternoon, including one delivery to all the homes in one district, and also to Dave Nadolny, who along with his volunteers, set out 75 luminaries, on both sides of E. Selby, in front of the apartments and condos, all the way from the St. Machael parking lot to 164 E. Selby, due to the resignation in September of longstanding apartment/condos Luminary Trustee Shelley McCoy.

And it would be bad karma to neglect to thank Mother Nature for the inexplicable weather behavior year after year (knock on wood) of giving us fairly, if not completely, non-raining, non-heavily snowing, and fairly mild days, for both Kit Assembly Saturday and Luminary Display Sunday.

So accordingly and thankfully, for Luminary Display Sunday, it was a mild 46 degrees, and the rain, which had been spitting around 7:00 PM stopped completely by 8:00 PM. As I drove each street, joy and laughter abounded, with lots of family members of all ages, both 2 and 4-legged, walking in the streets.

The long expanses of streets, with their virtually 100% participation were wondrous to see, such as on E. Selby from St. Michael all the way to Foster, the middle part of Park, and all of Meadoway, Park Overlook and Hardy Way including its front part on Park and Colonial, the northern section of Indianola, and all of E. Southington. And our other streets also had very high participation rates, around 90% — and so again, Thank You, Neighbors!

Finally, the CHCA wishes to thank our two Luminary Event sponsors for their very generous donations for this event: Erin Hunt Glowacki, the Powell Buehler Group and The Roof Detective.

Will Pearce
Luminary Event Chair

(And now for the photos (Photo Credit: CHCA Webmaster) – please click the “Continue reading” link below to see these pics which have the following descriptions)

_01 Inside Kit Assembly #1
_02 Inside Kit Assembly #2
_03 Inside Kit Assembly #3
_04 Outside Kit Assembly #1
_05 Outside Kit Assembly #2
_06 Outside Kit Assembly #3

Update, 4/12/2025: The April edition of the Worthington Spotlight has now been stocked in the newsstand, and going forward, each new month’s edition should be available there around the first of the month.

The Selby Park Little Neighborhood Newsstand is now available, stocked with 200 copies of The Worthington Spotlight, shown to the right of the Little Free Library in the photo below. Implemented as part of the Age-Friendly Worthington Initiative, the construction labor and the cost of materials were anonymously donated by Colonial Hills residents to the Colonial Hills Civic Association (CHCA), which worked with the City for approval of the project and the newspaper box detailed design.

The City performed the site installation on January 10, 2025. So now all that is left is for you to stop by to pick up your copy of The Spotlight, stay informed about Worthington news, and enjoy!