We continue our look at the top stories of 2009

JULY

New committee formed to study Avenue vacancies

Directors of the Chestnut Hill Business Association and the Chestnut Hill Community Association agreed last week to establish a joint committee to study more than 30 vacant commercial properties along Germantown Avenue and try to find ways to fill them with tenants.

The CHCA board was initially considering the creation of an ad hoc committee to study the vacancies, but board member Fran O’Donnell, who is also the business association’s main street manager, withdrew the motion to form the committee when Bob Rossman, another CHCA board member, noted that the committee would have to hold public meetings as required by CHCA bylaws.

MoRE

(Clockwise from top left) Chestnut Hill College planned a new campus for Sugarloaf. The Fall for the Arts Festival attracted a record crowd. Fire destroyed the historic Garrett-Dunn house. The closing of borders promises to pose the first big issue for the Hill in 2010.

Other News…

Essay The biggest story in Chestnut Hill: Zoning

Essay: Signs of life on the Avenue

Holidays on the Hill gift guide

Food columnist picks favorite    
By LEN LEAR

It’s a journalistic convention (as opposed to a political convention) at the end of a year for reviewers to announce their personal lists of “Best Movies of the Year,” “Best TV Shows of the Year,” “Best Novels of the Year,” etc. Therefore, even though I am not, strictly speaking, a reviewer (this column is much more “featurish” than “reviewish”), enough people have twisted my arm about my personal “best” choices that I hereby offer for your consideration my favorite restaurant experiences over the past year.
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10 ways to green in the New Year
by JENNIFER REED

Pursuant to aging, I am not the person I was even seven short years ago. I was not always the tree-hugging, green-tea-slurping, holistic-preaching person that I am today. It did not happen overnight, not even over a year, but over many years of baby steps until one day, here I am, a homemade granola-crunching greenie.
MorE

Washington and Lee junior and Lower Gwynned resident Anthony Cardona was one of three recipients in Virginia to win a $10,000 scholarship from the Virginia Foundation of Independent Colleges (VFIC)/Norfolk Southern Scholarship Program. The scholarships are awarded to students in their junior year attending Virginia colleges and universities who have academic promise and are seeking degrees in business or a related field.
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Springside gets by Chester to win own hoops tourney
by Tom Utescher

Trailing by as many as nine points during the second half in the championship game of the Springside School Holiday Basketball Tournament, the host Lions rallied to seize the tourney title last Tuesday evening, getting by Chester High School, 47-44.

In the tourney semifinals a day earlier, Springside (7-3) rolled past Little Flower, 55-14, while Chester’s Lady Clippers clobbered John W. Hallahan, 70-47. Prior to Tuesday’s championship contest, Little Flower (1-5) picked up its first victory of the season by shading Hallahan (1-5) in the consolation game, 41-39.
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Employees at the Flourtown Acme donated dozens of boxes of candy to Disabled American Veterans Hospital in Coatesville. There to pick up the candy for the third year in a row were Gerry Cattie of Chestnut Hill (right), a World War II vet with the Naval Air Corp., and Jim Murt of Hatboro (second from left), a World War II vet with the U.S. Army.  Acme employees who boxed up the candy and helped load the truck were (from left) Kevin Noll, Bob Halleck, Heather Rosa and Earl Jordan. (Photo by Pete Mazzaccaro)

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