October 24, 2012

Lending a hand: Telescope, Six Flags, town and village crews pitch in

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B y Jaime Thomas

Volunteers made improvements throughout Granville last week through a couple of separate efforts. Employees from Telescope Casual Furniture worked on a new playground, while Six Flags Great Escape staff cleaned up the Slate Valley Museum.

In a collaborative effort with the village and town of Granville, Telescope workers installed a new playground at the Granville Little League field on Wednesday and Thursday.

The project was initiated when the Little League’s board of directors was searching for funding to continue work on the ball field. Bruce Rathbun, a member of the board and plant manager at Telescope, said a federal program that helps create play spaces called KaBoom came up in their searches.

The board of directors accepted a grant offer for a new playground, which will open the door for additional grants down the road.

“We’re trying to turn the whole complex into a community use kind of place, instead of just baseball fields,” Rathbun said.

While the grant covered the majority of costs for the project, the town and village shared the outstanding balance equally. Rathbun said the playground is complete except for some more woodchips that need to be put down. He thinks the project went very well.

“It went quick and clean, and a lot of kids have already been using it,” Rathbun said. “It’s going to get a lot of use.”

The board of directors plans on continuing to improve the entire park.

The Slate Valley Museum, meanwhile, got a facelift on Thursday when employees from Six Flags Great Escape overtook the area for a massive volunteer work effort. Over 70 team members lent a hand, doing everything from custom landscaping to fixing the building’s siding.

Rebecca Close, Six Flag’s communications manager, said this is the company’s fourth year doing a volunteer service day. This time was different, though, because employees worked in collaboration with the village of Granville and nearby slate companies.

“This is unique because it brings in the entire community. It’s a really great opportunity, and the team members are all in this together,” Close said.

Volunteers made huge progress throughout the day, Close said. They completed over 300 feet of a walkway from the rail trail to the Pember Museum, sided the museum, and cleaned up the outdoor campus, for example. She credited the success of the project to seamless organization on the part of the Slate Valley Museum — and also to ideal weather.