If you go

What: Rock the Block Party

When: Noon to 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: JFK Playground, beside city hall, 11th Street, New Kensington

What: Kinloch Day

When: Noon to 7 p.m. Saturday

Where: Kinloch Fireman’s Playground, beside Kinloch firehall, New York Avenue, Lower Burrell

Daily Photo Galleries

By Liz Hayes

Published: Friday, August 16, 2013 , 1:46 a.m.

Updated 2 hours ago

Children in Lower Burrell and New Kensington have something to do this Saturday thanks to the grassroots efforts of two revitalization-minded community groups.

New festivals will be making their debuts at the Kinloch Fireman’s Park in Lower Burrell and the JFK Playground in New Kensington.

Both start at noon Saturday.

Kinloch Day is the culmination of a summer effort to restore the playground off New York Avenue. The small parklet was threatened with closure because it had fallen into disrepair and disuse, but a group of neighborhood residents intervened to restore it.

A lot of donations and elbow grease have resulted in a new or repaired pavilion, playground equipment, and landscaping.

Melanie Nanni, one of the residents spearheading the Kinloch Unites effort along with Alison Conway, said they wanted to celebrate their success and maintain the momentum they’ve created.

“I think everyone has realized it’s not just about the park, it’s the community,â€� Nanni said.

Nanni said the park has given children somewhere to play through the summer.

“We have gone from not being able to get anybody at that park, to at least eight kids being down there everyday,� she said. “It really has revitalized these kids.

“We thought, ‘We need to celebrate this,’ â€� Nanni said. “Alison came up with the idea of doing the festival.â€�

The event will include a variety of activities geared primarily for children, including a presentation by John Lege, “That Guy with the Birds�; a bounce house, pony rides, magician Nick Gentry, and Monsterz marble creator Chad Parker.

Nanni said there also will be things to interest adults, including bingo, raffles, a pie-eating contest and oil changes.

“Hopefully there will be a lot of stuff to keep people’s attention,â€� Nanni said.

Nanni said the Kinloch Unites group has more plans in store for the playground. Ideas include a community garden, a free lunch program and activities during winter snow days when students don’t have school.

New Kensington festival

The Rock the Block party at JFK Playground grew out of a Facebook post, said Troy Owen, a New Kensington resident who runs the city’s Liberty Tax Service branch.

Owen said someone posted a “remember when� comment on the social-networking site, which blossomed into a discussion of childhood memories growing up in New Kensington and Arnold in the 1980s and ‘90s.

People also lamented that some of the community events and spirit they appreciated as children seemed to be lacking. That sparked Owen and several others to step in.

“Maybe nobody’s done anything because we’re the adults now and it’s on us to do this,â€� said Owen.

The block party will include an “Old School� talent showcase, in which participants are encouraged to incorporate ‘80s and ‘90s pop culture into their acts.

The talent show will be followed by the Chris Miller 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament, named in memory of the Valley High School graduate and basketball standout who was shot to death in an Arnold alley in 2004.

Owen said they also will be raising money through T-shirt sales and other activities for a scholarship in Miller’s honor.

Folks also will be on hand to raise money for the Maiyanna Foundation, which benefits Maiyanna Clemons-McCarthy, 3, of Penn Hills, who was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive type of tumor in her brain stem. She is the daughter of Valley graduate Mycah Clemons.

Other activities will include games, clowns, food vendors, music and other children’s activities.

“We’re hoping for a pretty significant turnout,â€� Owen said.

Although they had begun planning the event before the city’s annual Independence Day block party and fireworks were canceled, Owen said they hope it serve as an alternate summer party for residents.

“We’re looking to have a really good time,â€� he said.

Liz Hayes is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 724-226-4680 or lhayes@tribweb.com.

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GETTING CONSENSUS – One of the four groups of residents at a design workshop July 12 on the Osterville Bay Fields vote on their preferences for improvements. Community Services Director Lynne Poyant, at back, led the group’s discussion.

About 40 Osterville residents shared plenty of ideas for improvements they would like to see at the Osterville Bay Fields during a design workshop Aug. 12.

The town’s Community Services Department and the Osterville Village Association sponsored the session that brought in three landscape architects from the project consulting firm of Vanasse, Hangen, Brustlin Inc. The architects, Jeff Basser, Kathleen Ogden and Nia Rogers, along with Community Services Director Lynne Poyant, led four roundtable group discussions centered around maps of the outdated, rundown 4-acre park-playground near the village center.

The participants were encouraged to use plastic overlay pieces shaped as playing fields and courts and other elements to help them envision how the park might look.

The architects first described their observations of the site and areas that might need upgrading. Basser, a project manager, stressed that they had “no preconceived plan,” but asked the participants to consider such factors as handicap access and whether the community building should stay or not.

 “We’re not touching the school,” he said. “The community building could go away.” Some residents have pushed for various uses for the former Osterville Bay school building, but those were not discussed Monday.

Many of the groups’ suggestions for uses were similar, which were summarized at the end of the two-hour workshop. All groups wanted to keep the playground, the tennis and basketball courts and the ballfields, but perhaps convert some for multiple uses, such as soccer and lacrosse on the field and tennis and street hockey on the courts. A field for Little League baseball also was brought up.

 Suggested new uses included a band shell, a combined walking and biking path (for small children) through the park, a spray pool or splash pad, fitness stations, barbecue grills and picnic area, volleyball or badminton courts and public bathrooms.

 The groups were split on keeping the community building. Poyant’s took votes on all the proposals and were unanimous on most, but split 50-50 on the community center. Another group suggested new uses for the center building, such as a youth center and indoor courts and even a coffee bar.

Kathy Pina of the recreation commission was adamant that there should be more emphasis on the young people. “What do we have for the kids? Nothing,” she said. “It’s time to start thinking about the kids, not just the adults. What it was before, it needs to be today.” Most participants agreed that the park should have facilities for all ages – from toddlers to adults.

Some groups discussed native landscaping and fencing all around the park. Someone suggested signage to tie the park into the downtown area. The limited parking was discussed and one idea was shared parking with nearby Our Lady of the Assumption Church, where the meeting was held. Others brought up lack of visibility of the playground and problems with litter.

One thing all agreed on was the “fields,” as they are called, are in need of refurbishing.

Community Preservation funds might be employed. Community Preservation Committee chairman Lindsey Counsell said one requirement of the CPC is that approved projects must be maintained. Money would be put in the capital program for things such as trash pickup, he said. A maintenance budget will be part of the final proposal, the architects said.

Recreation Commissioner Joe O’Brien made the group aware of the high cost of demolishing the community center, but he said it might be worth it to allow other uses.

The next community session will be Monday, Aug. 26, at 7 p.m., and may be moved to the village library for more room. At that meeting, the architects will have four alternative plans to share and get more input from the residents. A third meeting is scheduled for Sept. 9 and a final one for Sept. 23.

It usually happens right after I’ve watched some fabulous home design TV show; I find myself thinking, I don’t live in California or the Southwest, where many of these shows are shot. Some of these great design ideas I’ve just seen don’t apply to the New England lifestyle.

But recently, I had a glimpse of what’s going on behind closed doors and garden gates in our own state at the Newtown Historical Society’s home and garden tour, From the Past Into the Present. My sister came with me to check out the six houses featured.

The properties were an interesting mix of antique and new. Four homes were originally built in the 18th or 19th centuries, with additions and updates being included in the 20th or 21st centuries; two of the homes were built within the last 10 years.

Starting on the homes’ exteriors, we noticed that millstones were used as outdoor accents at both antique and contemporary homes on the tour. Millstones are heavy granite disks several inches thick that were used in pairs to grind grains in mills. They give a nice solid circle as a garden focal point. I’ll keep this in mind for future garden planning at my home.

William Royall of Maine Millstones confirmed using millstones in the garden has become popular in southwestern Connecticut.

“It is sort of a trend,” Royall said. “We send a lot of millstones to Greenwich, Fairfield, Darien, Westport and Newtown. There’s been a wave of Americana, if you will. If you have an old house, you want that antique character to carry across into the outside hardscaping.”

His company is one of the few providers of millstones. But with the demand for them outpacing the availability of antique millstones, their carvers are making new ones.

“They end up in upscale places. The best ones are made of granite, although in the 1800s millstones made from limestone were shipped over from France,” Royall said.

One antique home we saw started with an early 1800s house with a large kitchen addition. The owners worked with Academy Design and Construction LLC, of Newtown.

Ben Pilchard, the founder of Academy Design, shared some insight into adding modern amenities without destroying antique charms.

“How do you transition from old to new without feeling that’s what you’re doing? You have to understand scale,” he said. “Scale on the exterior and scale in the interior, you need to keep the scale. Keep the addition within certain dimensions so the house will accept the addition and still feel like the same house.

“In that case, the owners wanted cathedral ceilings in the kitchen. From the outside you can’t tell because the gable works with the architecture. From the inside, you try to carry materials into the new room. We used wide-plank flooring, beams, trim that exists from around the windows. Floors were key,” he said.

Flow from indoors to outdoors was something my sister and I noticed at another home on the tour, an amazing modern structure on the shore of Lake Zoar.

The wall separating the family room from the lakeside patio consisted of glass doors that folded back to completely open up the lower level to the outdoors. The family room’s floor continued that indoor/outdoor flow by changing from a darker material to a lighter stone as you crossed the room toward the outdoors. By the time you reach the doorway, the indoor floor is the same stone as the patio floor.

My sister is rethinking her plan for adding a new patio to her home. Adding some sparkle with her choice of stone, or combining more than one type of stone is something she said she might consider after seeing this house.

Several of the antique homes used a red, white and blue color scheme in bedrooms and TV rooms. Picking one of these three colors as the main hue and using the other two as accents is the way to go, advised Dina Ragona-Pistouris, a designer at Ethan Allen in Danbury, “It’s a classic, all-American look. The colors make people feel good,” she said. “It’s always going to be around, especially in the New England area.”

But for those looking to update their decor, she recommends the current trend toward greys and light blues paired with mushroom-colored walls. “These are soothing colors,” Ragona-Pistouris said.

My sister and I saw that trend in a circa-1700s home, whose muted gray-blue interior colors suited the original sections of the building and connected through to more recent additions.

Color can tie otherwise disparate things together, In one antique house the owner combined inherited yellow glass ornaments with antique shop finds in the same color glass to tie in with her living room and dining room decor. The items visually balanced the yellow throughout the two rooms.

cmueller@newstimes.com; 203-731-3338; http://twitter.com/CarolynMNT/