BY KRISSI HUMBARD — Residents and visitors grabbed cans of spray paint and lobbed paint-dipped water balloons to show their love for Hyattsville on Sept. 23.
Green Owl Design, a local interior design firm and boutique, teamed up with Urban Investment Partners (UIP) to organize Hearts in Hyattsville: A Community Paint Day. The event was part of UIP and Green Owl Design’s efforts to beautify the abandoned buildings along Route 1. UIP recently purchased the buildings and partnered with Green Owl Design to add some color and breathe some life into the vacant buildings.
For one building, the formerly white garage located at 5334 Baltimore Ave., the community was invited to spray paint hearts and letter Hs and toss water balloons dipped in paint to create a colorful, splatter effect.
“When a community comes together to work on a project, it has more meaning to everyone involved,” said the team at Green Owl Design. “Hyattsville is a diverse, vibrant, and active community so we thought it made perfect sense to get folks of all ages motivated and excited about our initiative to fight the blight!”
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Green Owl Design says the community paint day exceeded their expectations in terms of the number of participants and the overall excitement for the project.
Hyattsville Mayor Candace Hollingsworth was one of the first participants.
“The community paint day was so much fun!,” Hollingsworth said. “It’s amazing how something like using a building as a blank canvas and providing buckets of paint (and water balloons!) can bring so much joy to people of all ages.”
“From what we saw, the adults definitely had as much fun as the kids!,” the Green Owl Design team said.
Hollingsworth agreed. “The best part for me was knowing that a memory was created that day for the kids and kids at heart; it was truly an unforgettable experience,” she said. “I have tremendous gratitude for UIP and Green Owl Design for giving ‘including the community in the process’ a different meaning.”
