Local Business Beautification Projects Completed
/You may have noticed a few improvements around some local organizations recently. In 2021, Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful awarded beautification grants to local organizations and businesses for the first year. The nonprofit’s beautification grants are in honor of National Planting Day, but celebrate all manner of beautification efforts.
The Boys and Girls Club had volunteers, employees, and their youth all work together to reestablish the plant beds around their signs and planters near the front of their entrance.
Six businesses and organizations were selected for their beautification project including 108 North Pentz Building, the Artistic Civic Theatre, Raspberry Row, Whitfield-Murray Historical Society, Boys and Girls Club of Chatooga, Gordon, Murray, and Whitfield, and Looper Speech and Hearing Center. The grants given ranged from $350 to $500.
Katie McCreery-Scarbor of Looper Speech and Hearing Center said about working on their project that focused on an outdoor seating area and entrance sign, "I'm not sure we've ever been more excited about dirt! We were lucky to discover that, when tilling the area around the sign, there was already top soil present rather than just red clay. That certainly made planting the azaleas easier--all we had to do was supplement with a little Miracle Grow."
Many of the projects included new landscaping and plantings while others required fresh paint and structures.
When walking downtown you may spot the improvement by Raspberry Row. Raspberry Row installed a new bench crafted by Machine Craft Inc. outside its storefront. Going a little farther, you’ll come across new plantings by the Boys and Girls Club on Underwood Road.
When writing about their goal of beautifying the entrance, Casey Crump said “Part of our mission is to enable young people, especially those who need us the most, to reach their full potential; this project helps create an opportunity to do just that. Taking care of the club from the inside out helps us teach our youth on the importance of self-care also.”