NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - North Little Rock’s Park Hill district just got beautified. A new grant has allowed some special helpers to add color and life to area businesses.
If you go to Angry Dave’s Bicycles in Park Hill, you'll see a couple cute pups roaming around. They are basically the store mascots. Their adorable faces are also works of art for the shop. The face of one of the dogs, Riley, was painted on a special planter pot outside the shop.
Hannah Larson created the Angry Dave’s pot which was one of many placed inside and outside area businesses. The pots were possible because of the City of North Little Rock offers the Park Hill Business and Merchants Association $1,000 for their own city beautification project.
During a community event earlier this summer, Larson joined students from the community to design more than 20 pots for area businesses. Larson said it was fun watching other young people create different designs for different shops.
Park Hill business owner, Callie Matthews, owner of Matthews Studios Fine Arts School, helped the kids hone in on their artistic abilities for the project.
“Of course we had to have the kids work on them,” she said. “Yes, I oversaw, but mainly it was all them.”
Matthews said doing this project with the students helped them learn more about what’s going on in the community around them.
“When they are part of what’s going on In the community, they are more invested in what’s going on in the community,” she said.
Lindy Lanford, owner of the Bridal Cottage and member of the Park Hill Business and Merchants Association, said projects like these help everyone in Park Hill grow and thrive.
“Our whole mission and whole goal is to drive more business to the area,” she said. “We want to thrive in North Little Rock and have the community more involved with the businesses as well.”
Lanford’s hope is that by investing in the area, Park Hill can be what it once was and perhaps even better.
“We want everyone to work as one to really build the Park Hill corridor to where it used to be back in the ‘50s and ‘60s,” she said.
Live plants from Plantopia were provided at a discounted rate for all the pots in Park Hill. You can see them all along the JFK corridor.
For more info about the project and the Park Hill Business and Merchants Association, visit here.