All-Time High Attendance at the Park Hill Home Tour and Street Fair
Roberta Locke, Home Tour Chair
A beautiful day, an afternoon with no competing Bronco game or other sports diversion, and some great television coverage showing some of our featured homes all added up to the most successful home tour in our 35 years! We started running out of tickets and brochures at some of our ticket kiosks around 1:30pm … that was a first! Our clever volunteers came up with some creative solutions for tickets and programs and the people kept coming!
We implemented a new ticket sales plan this year and we want to thank everyone for being patient and good natured about the new plan, in spite of the snafus we were experiencing. The higher number of Home Tour attendees and the demand for tickets added to the confusion. We hope to have the kinks worked out by next year. We are trying to find the best way to sell and distribute tickets and would love some feedback and/or suggestions from those of you who attend the tour year after year. Please contact Nina Kuhl, at kuhlnina@yahoo.com, with your ideas.
We want to thank our extremely generous homeowners for opening their homes to some 1,500 people: Mimi and Eric Ruderman; Carol and Dirk McDermott; Deb Goeken; Susan and Mike Barden; Kimm and Tim Lucas; and Bridget Walsh and Louis Plachowski. Their commitment to and support of the Greater Park Hill Community is so very appreciated.
Thank you to our sponsors: the team at Cherry Creek Properties including Renee McMichael, Nina Kuhl, John Neu, Steve LaPorta, Kim Tighe, Ann Torgerson, Jane McLaughlin and Roberta Locke; the Gerwin Team of Kentwood Cherry Creek, Mary Gerwin and Shaylisa Turner; Anastasia Williamson of Kentwood City Properties; Leah Johnson of Megastar Financial Corporation; Emily Roet of Roet Realty; Bridget Walsh and Louis Plachowski of Denver Welcome Home; Tom Hart of Hart Studio, LLC; and, Kirk Cochran of Division One Construction. We are grateful for your continued support of the Park Hill Home Tour.
I want to thank the home tour committee: Kate Sultan, Street Fair Chair; Larry Sondgeroth, Kim Tighe and Tannan Morris, Volunteer Coordinators; Susan Barden, Paula Wales and Lynn Maedel, Silent Auction Committee; Pam and Jack Farrar, Advertising Committee; Wendy Keefer, Print and Logistics; and Nina Kuhl, Kids Activities. Home Tour planning meetings begin in January and this is such a great group of committed people. Thank you for your hard work and all the hours you put into this effort!
Thanks to Elizabeth Wheeler who did a fabulous job on PR; Emily Boyle who wrote the wonderful home descriptions for the newspaper and the brochure; and Joyce Cerretti for designing the brochure and poster. Thank you Robyn Fishman, GPHC Executive Director, for getting our PayPal card readers up and running and for all of your help in so many areas the day of and in the days leading up to the event.
Thank you to Sonic Restaurant for donating the volunteer T-shirts for the committee and other key home tour personnel. Thanks Kate and Ed Sultan, for donating the event bags. Thanks to Great Divide for donating the beer and to Mayfair Liquors for donating the wine at the Street Fair’s beer and wine garden. To Oblio’s Pizza, Spinelli’s Market, the Cherry Tomato and Mayfair Liquors again, a hearty thank you for providing the food and drink for the volunteer appreciation party. And, Kim and Dan Tighe, thanks for hosting the party at your beautiful home.
Thanks to the 100+ volunteers who work at the homes and the Street Fair on the day of the event. Your help makes everything work smoothly, safely and efficiently.
To Tracey MacDermott and Heather Shockey, a huge thank you for gathering up all of the trash after the event. Because of their work, sorting trash for recycling and composting, the Home Tour and Street Fair produced a just a single bag of garbage – we’re practically a zero waste event! If you saw a pair with headlamps on Forest Parkway after the event, that was them!
The following people have been critical to the Park Home Tour for 30-plus years and their contributions have become a time-honored tradition. Thank you Lydia Mary of Ed Moore Florist, on 6101 East Colfax, for providing the incredible floral arrangements in each of the show homes. Thank you, Marc Applebaum, Applebaum Architects, for consistently providing the architectural renderings we present to each of the homeowners. And, thank you Mike Jacobsen of Frame of Mind, 5314 East Colfax, for providing the matting services for the home renderings. You all make such a valuable contribution!
At the time of this writing, the Home Tour and Street Fair had grossed $46,764! When all is said and done and the dust settles, we expect we will net $40,000! This represents about one-third of the total budget for Greater Park Hill Community, Inc., your registered neighborhood organization.
The Park Hill Home Tour and Street Fair is organized by volunteers who spend vast amounts of time and energy to bring this wonderful community building event to fruition every year. I have been privileged the last 10 years or so to work on this committee, make so many new friends throughout our community and to get to know so many great neighbors.
Nina Kuhl and Nichole Barnes will co-chair the home tour next year and they would love to have you involved. It’s a lot of fun and many hands make light work. Please contact Nina at kuhlnina@yahoo.com.
And how about that Street Fair! Kate Sultan was the chair of the Street Fair event for the second year and she pulled out all stops. She could use some help, by the way. Her contact information follows her comments.
The Street Fair Wants Your Input!
Thanks to all who attended this year’s Home Tour and Street Fair! Mother Nature certainly cooperated giving us outstanding weather. The Street Fair had a great group of vendors and kids activities and bands and food trucks. Thanks once again to our Park Hill neighbors who live on Forest Parkway for allowing us to enjoy their beautiful street for the day.
We would love to get some feedback from those of you who attended the Street Fair. We always ask our Street Fair Vendors for feedback and suggestions for improvement and they give it. We need feedback from YOU, the attendees. What should we do differently to make the Street Fair better? What additional types of vendors would you like to see? What other activities would you like to see? What would make this a more exciting event for you and your neighbors? If you have specific names of artists or crafters or businesses that you think would do well at this event, we would be happy to hear about them. We would love to see the Street Fair expand all the way down to 17th Avenue for next year so please put your thinking caps on and forward us some suggestions. Even better, if you would like to be involved with the planning of the Street Fair please let us know. This is an all-volunteer effort and we always appreciate help. If you own a business in Park Hill or you live in Park Hill and own a business in Denver this is a great way to let all of your neighbors know about you.
Please drop us an email to krsultan@comcast.net or send your suggestions via US Mail to Street Fair at GPHC, 2823 Fairfax St., Denver, CO 80207.
THANK YOU, PARK HILL!