By Joseph Goral
Staff Writer
jgoral@mihomepaper.com
OXFORD — The Oxford Downtown Development Authority is looking for volunteers to help prepare the downtown for summer during their summer prep day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 23.
Volunteers will build and set up furniture, stain the Oxford/Lake Orion Downtown Trolley Express, lay mulch and plant flowers, shrubs and grass in downtown Oxford.
“This is getting Oxford kicked up for summer and definitely, in my opinion, making it look its very best for its busiest time downtown,” said Kelly Westbrook, executive director for the Oxford DDA. “What we really do is do all the extra planting in the extra places. So, anything that is in Centennial Park or in some of the different community spaces like the Pati-O, The Courtyard, or Washington Square.”
“As part of (the T-Mobile and Consumers-Energy Foundation) grant that we received, we’ll be putting out new umbrellas, and you’ll see a little bit of new furniture,” said Westbrook. “So this is one of our biggest volunteer days of the year; we hope it is at least, because we need the help for sure.”
Anyone interested in volunteering, or for more information and to sign up can visit downtownoxford.info/events/summer-prep-day.
“Washington Square, The Courtyard and the Pati-O is where they would set up either new games, new furniture and umbrellas and stuff. And then, inside Centennial Park we just do some flower planting there, we have our little community rock garden there, and we do have some games so we’ll just get all of that kind of organized,” Westbrook said.
One of the bigger projects the DDA hopes to get to is refurbishing the trolley that runs between Oxford and Lake Orion.
“If we have enough volunteers, which I’m crossing my fingers that we do, our hope is to be able to get the trolley sanded and re-stained on the outside,” Westbrook said.