Billboard builds buzz for lemonade stand

Ad company donates sign for playground fund-raiser

A giant photo of a pint-sized playground activist now greets drivers as they head east on 23rd Street.

Chloe Sheridan — the 10-year-old who is selling lemonade to raise money for playground equipment at her Lawrence subsidized-housing complex — appeared Monday in a photo on a full-sized billboard on 23rd Street east of Haskell Avenue. An advertising company donated the sign after a company executive in Tennessee read about Chloe in USA Today and wanted to help her cause.

The ad includes a 6-foot version of Chloe’s fourth-grade school picture.

“It’s weird,” said Chloe, now a fifth-grader at Quail Run School. “I don’t totally like the picture … My mom pulled my hair back way too tight.”

The sign says “Help Me Improve Our Playground” and advertises her weekly lemonade stands at the intersection of North Second and Lyon streets in North Lawrence. So far, she has raised $2,013.66, much of it through donations rather than lemonade profits.

The goal of the billboard is to help Chloe’s “playground enhancement fund” reach $3,000, said Matt Zielsdorf, an account executive at Lamar Advertising Co. in Topeka. He said the idea to donate the billboard came from the company’s regional manager, Flip Durant, after he picked up a newspaper in Nashville, Tenn., and read about Chloe.

The sign, which will be up through Sept. 4, also includes a thermometer with the mercury at $2,000.

“Our goal was to try to paint the picture that this is how much she’s raised, and this is how close she is to reaching her goal,” Zielsdorf said. “We wanted people to realize how serious this 10-year-old girl is.”

Chloe began her efforts because there were not enough swings — and no toddler swings — at Pine Tree Townhouses, a housing cooperative near 19th Street and Haskell Avenue. After a Kansas City television station reported on her efforts, companies donated a swingset and new pavement for the complex’s basketball court.

None of the new equipment has been installed yet, said Chloe’s aunt, Hannah Sheridan.

Chloe will sell lemonade from noon to 2 p.m. each Saturday for the rest of the month.

Chloe Sheridan recently received unexpected help with raising money for playground equipment: An advertising company donated billboard space after reading about her. Sheridan, from Lawrence, is pictured Thursday at the sign on 23rd Street.