The Colonial Hills Civic Association

The Parks and Recreation Department will be fully replacing the damaged section of the Indianola Park playground and its safety surfacing. After some time working with the insurance companies, Parks & Rec has now ordered the replacement equipment and has a contractor prepared to install soon after its arrival.

Parks & Rec is awaiting an estimated shipping date and would caution that they have seen some of these take some time since COVID began, but their hope is to have the equipment on hand and installed sometime in the spring. They will keep the fencing up for safety until the work can be completed.

If you have any questions, please contact the Worthington Parks and Recreation Department at 614-436-2743. Project updates will be posted on the City’s website at Worthington Park Projects.

Colonial Hills graduating seniors or Colonial Hills residents pursuing continuing education – please review the detail requirements on page 2 of the 2022 scholarship application – MS Word format here or PDF format here) (or use the links at the right).

As specified on page 1 of the application, your completed application must be received by April 4 (if you deliver it in person or e-mail it), or postmarked by April 1, if you mail it to our P.O. Box.

The Winter 2022 Colonial Hills Courier Scholarship Application article, on pages 9 and 10, specifies exactly the same requirements as are specified in the above-referenced scholarship application forms, but with a more easily visualized graphic display for the requirements. Therefore, you may optionally print out, cut out, copy, etc., this article from the Courier, to use as your application form, if you wish.

We hope to double the amount of $3,000 that we awarded last year – so apply now, before you forget!

Even a full moon did not dim the bright holiday lights in our fine community. Thank you for adding some shine and shimmer to another challenging year.

The judges were distracted by the huge buck in the front yards of the 400 block of Park Overlook, but once back on task, the following houses were deemed the winners for 2021:

• Best Overall – First Place: 287 Loveman – Wow!! Just go see it!! Music, lotsa lights, blow ups, retro theme…it has all our favorites all in one!!
• Best Overall – Second Place: 215 Selby – Merry Camping!
• Best Overall – Third Place: 435 Park – An evergreen dripping with huge bulbs.
• Best Front Door – First Place: 5603 Indianola – Earthy and Charming country style.
• Best Front Door – Second Place: 63 Southington – Lovely and classic evergreen swags surround the door and its red “Merry Christmas” sign.
• Best Front Door – Third Place: 212 Colonial – Although the address was hard to see in the dark, you can’t miss the blue and cool toned multi colored lights around the entrance.
• Best Retro: 583 Loveman – Grinch, Spongebob and Elf are now retro!
• Most Artistic: 356 Colonial – An artful display of gifts on a sled and tiny colorful lights beautifully arranged throughout the yard and fencing.
• Most Lit Up: 71 Southington – A sea of white lights. Love the angel.

Have a safe and joyous holiday season!

(And here are the pics, with photo credits to the Secret Judges – please click the “Continue reading” link below to see these photos)

_01 Best Overall – 1st Place
_02 Best Overall – 2nd
_03 Best Overall – 3rd
_04 Best Front Door – 1st Place
_05 Best Front Door – 2nd
_06 Best Front Door – 3rd
_07 Best Retro
_08 Most Artistic
_09 Most Lit Up

Continue reading ‘2021 Colonial Hills Holiday Decorating Contest and Photos’ »

Please sign up, using our SignUpGenius for Kit Assembly, for Luminary Kits Assembly, Saturday, December 4, starting at 10:00 AM.

Due to ongoing COVID concerns for our luminary kits event, we will again be limiting the number of volunteers – but not as drastically as for 2020.

That is, to try to ensure the safety of all volunteers and their families at home, we will enforce masks to be worn at all times and we will limit the number of volunteers for each task, so as to maintain social distancing, especially inside the shelter house. The number of volunteers will be limited as specified below and in our SignUpGenius.

Please note that for 2021, volunteers for any task can include any youth middle-school age or older, due to the current availability of vaccines for youth of this age. And based on our experience from 2020, there will need to be only one shift of volunteers for these tasks, as follows:

1. Inside the shelter house component assembly (up to 8 volunteers)
2. Outside the shelter house component assembly (up to 7 volunteers, plus the Event Chair)
3. Bundling supervisor (1 volunteer)
4. Pea gravel shovelers (up to 8 volunteers), who are requested to bring their own standard-size, pointed-tip garden shovel. There will be teams of two people at each of the 4 shoveling station chairs. Each shoveling team can decide how long each member will shovel, while the other team member holds open the grocery bags (team members could switch roles halfway through).

Pease note that as opposed to last year, if you didn’t sign up beforehand on our SignUpGenius, but do show up to volunteer at 10:00 AM on Saturday morning, there may still be an open position for you to volunteer. However, we request that you do sign up ahead of time to reserve the volunteer position of your choice.

Dunkin’ donuts, coffee and hot chocolate will be served, and plenty of hand sanitizer will be provided inside the shelter house – and we greatly thank our two sponsors for our event:

• Colonial Hills resident Erin Glowacki, the Mark Neff Team, New Albany Realty and
• Colonial Hills resident Scott Dahs, Rapid Mortgage Company.

Regarding the Trustees picking up their bundles of kits for their Districts: We are asking the Trustees to start coming over no earlier than noon on Saturday to pick up their bundles, so as not to increase the number of people present in the shelter house area during the kit assembly timeframe, which is expected to be 10:00 AM to about 11:30 AM, especially if it is not raining too hard that day.

Light Your Luminaries! Our luminary display evening will be Sunday, December 12, starting at 7:00 PM, per the instructions which will be enclosed in each resident’s luminary kit.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions, or if you encounter any difficulty using our event’s SignUpGenius. Thank you,

Will Pearce, Luminaries Event Chair
365 S. Selby Blvd
614-888-8236
willpearce@columbus.rr.com

This upcoming Saturday morning, November 13, will be a very busy time in the Hills, with these two events:

1) 9:00 AM – The Kilbourne Middle School (KMS) first annual “Hot Chocolate 5k.”

To register, please click the following link, which will take you to the KMS PTSA’s memberhub.com store web page, and click the Hot Chocolate 5k icon: Kilbourne Middle School Hot Chocolate 5k

The registration fee is $20.00 for all age groups, and the KMS Hot Chocolate Run course is identical to the CHCA 4th of July 5k course:
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Please feel free to contact Lynsey Pearson lynsey.serr@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

2) The annual Neighborhood Food Drive – the CHCA along with local Scouts will be collecting food Saturday morning.

Although we request that you leave your donations on your porch by 8:30 AM, along with the flyer dropped off at your home – due to the KMS Hot Chocolate 5k at 9:00 AM with runners in the streets, we probably won’t be by your house to pick up your donations until starting around 10:30 AM. Or, you can just drop off your items at the Selby Park Shelter House around 10:00 AM.

The most needed items are: canned goods; ready to eat meals; beans, rice, chicken, broths; cereal and peanut butter; and personal hygiene items.

Please drive with the utmost care on Saturday morning with all the runners in the streets, and the many volunteers crossing our streets to pick up the food drive donations.

Your secret judges (who took the pics below) congratulate the winners of the Halloween House Decorating Contest:

Best Activity: 551 Park – Poems posted and on paper to go … supplies list in case you are wondering how this was done. Amazing, really. Apples, candy and dog bones. (Thanks for the Butterfinger!) A very unique and creative display!

Friendliest: 244 Colonial – Charlie Brown welcomes the Great Pumpkin. Sweet and charming.

Spookiest: 363 Loveman – Duh! … graves, skeletons, ghost hologram, oh my! And, the rat on the porch was almost too much!!! Eeek!!!

Most Creative: 583 Loveman – Green Glowing skeletons, scary trees, Giant Pumpkin, a great variety of scary vignettes.

Best Effects: 524 Colonial – The Monster House with the scariest soundtrack ever!! How cool is this?!! It’s Alive!!

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

_01 Best Activity Day
_01 Best Activity Day – Detail
_01 Best Activity Night
_02 Friendliest Day
_02 Friendliest Night
_03 Spookiest Night
_04 Most Creative Night
_04 Most Creative Night – Detail
_05 Best Effects Night

Continue reading ‘2021 Halloween Decorating Contest and Photos’ »

The Worthington Age-Friendly Initiative has been organized by a committee of community partners, city staff members and older adults who are now inviting you to take this Age-Friendly Survey on the City’s website to tell them what you think – about existing programs/initiatives and to hear your ideas for how Age-Friendly Worthington could further impact and improve the quality of life for people of all ages. Please take the survey now, as it closes November 1.

Background, per information on the City’s Age-Friendly Worthington Web Page: In December, 2019, Worthington City Council approved a resolution to join the AARP Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities, and to create an age-friendly community to promote successful aging and improve the quality of life for all ages.

The City will receive the findings from this survey, and the findings from similar surveys being conducted in the Central Ohio region, and then conduct Worthington-specific focus groups, both in-person and virtual. Thus, your input is critical to inform, update and improve Worthington’s programs and policies, and to help make Worthington an even better place to age well.

The CHCA Webmaster completed the project on 9/24/2021 to migrate our website to one of our host’s upgraded servers.  The project involved some software/content modifications, resulting in our website now running the current versions of WordPress, database software and scripting languages, and implementing other security improvements.

The Colonial Hills Couriers which have been archived to our website are listed below
(if there is a link “Continue reading Courier Archive” below, click it to display the archived items).
Continue reading ‘Courier Archive’ »

A tremendous Thank You! to Worthington Parks and Recreation for completing the Selby Park Playground Replacement Project on July 30, 2021 — this new, beautiful facility is being greatly enjoyed by folks of all ages!

Photo Credit: CHCA Webmaster, taken at 7:23 AM on 9/11/2021 — feel free to use this photo as you wish!