News and Events

September 13, 2014: PLACES Dedicates 25th Anniversary Commemorative Walkway at Gascho Gardens

To celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2013, PLACES today dedicated a commemorative walkway at Gascho Gardens, one of its four Residential Adult Care Facilities, and celebrated afterward with an ice cream social attended by 75 people.

Located on Dayton’s east side, Gascho Gardens evolved from the first PLACES Adult Care Facility in 1988 and today provides a home for 12 residents.

The commemorative walkway features personalized, engraved pavers, which friends of PLACES ordered to honor family members, loved ones and the people PLACES serves. Surrounding the walkway are weeping cherry, magnolia, forsythia and other landscaping amenities.

The $8,255 in donations toward the walkway benefited the Heart and Home Legacy Society, the PLACES endowment fund established through The Dayton Foundation. Supporting the endowment fund helps to protect the future for PLACES residents, clients and tenants and ensure that the quality programs at PLACES remain financially secure.

The walkway, designed and built by the landscape company Siebenthaler’s, is nicer than he ever envisioned, said Roy Craig, executive director of PLACES.

“We did some really neat things with landscaping to improve the home’s curb appeal and make it better for our residents,” he said. “It greatly improves the property.”

Project donors ranged from staff, board members and family members to vendors and funders, such as the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) Board for Montgomery County. Most supporters purchased pavers to honor their own family members or residents, Craig said.

“It’s very fitting that we built the walkway at Gascho Gardens, the first Residential Adult Care Facility that we owned and operated,” he said. “A few of the original residents are still here because this is stable housing and the best level of care for them.”

Also dedicated was a tree in memory of Carolyn Young, director of human resources at PLACES from 1996–2003, who passed away in 2012 after battling cancer. Memorial contributions made this additional landscape improvement possible, Craig said.

“Carolyn had great compassion for our residents, clients and tenants, and never forgot that they always come first,” he said.

News Archive:

May 2014: Update Your Enrollment in the Kroger Community Rewards Program on Behalf of PLACES

January 16, 2014: LISW, is New Director of Client Services at PLACES

December 12, 2013: PLACES to Build 25th Anniversary Commemorative Walkway

September 2013: PLACES Opens its Largest Housing First Program Yet

May 3, 2013: PLACES Helps Ex-offenders Start Their Lives Over

April 1, 2013: Keep Your Support Coming–Renew Your Annual Kroger Community Rewards Registration!

December 6, 2012: Homeless Persons' Memorial Service to be Held at Courthouse Square, Dayton, at noon December 2

August 8, 2012: PLACES to Open Its Fourth Housing First Facility

July 27, 2012: 36 Residents Will Benefit from Repairs, Improvements to Four PLACES Adult Care Facilities

July 23, 2012: The Colorado Tragedy: What Families Are Asking