Buffalo Rising Online

I take tai chi there every Wednesday night and now we can stay longer as the night comes along quicker. I tell ya, the junkies in my bldg ain't too happy, but the rest of us are.

MikeS, if your talking about lighting for the park why do you leave this area of Elmwood out of your desire for the main streetway? Everything ain't Allentown all the time, baby. Rest of us folks need this help too.

Thanks, Rachacha, except Mayor Brown is in a much ncer suit and is MUCH more fit! Newell, where did you get that photo? Someone could have at least told me to hold my breath or something! Oh well, old age - what a bite!

The lights are tremendous, what a difference! We even walked across S Elmwood and, for the first time, could see ALL THE WAY into the park - and - it makes the park look much bigger. Amazing what a little light can do. And, of course, a great partnership with our city leaders and local businesses - a winning combination!

sbrof: These are metal halide lamps. Metal halide lamps provide the highest performance in energy efficiency, light quality, light output, and lamp life, for a wide variety of indoor and outdoor applications in industrial, commercial and municipal spaces. They provide longer life. Of all available light sources, metal halide lamps produce the closest to natural sunlight. People prefer the white light produced by metal halide lamps. Metal halide lamps offer excellent color rendering with a CRI (Color Rendering Index) of 65 - 85 and to top it off, metal halide lamps produce light 3 - 5 times as efficiently as incandescent lamps, with less heat, and emit whiter light than incandescent or sodium vapor lamps. So, I agree with you, we have a win-win here.

mikes, sorry if you didn;t understand what I meant. Elmwood Avenue starts at Allen and so does South Elmwood Avenue. The South Elmwood Avenue area is the route you take to downtown and city hall and other areas like the waterfront. It is also where the West Village is and the West Village is even older than Allentown so historic lights would be best there to. Do you live around there? I do and I learned a lot when I read the display at Johnson Park about the area and then went and did some more reading. It s really historic and is the last bastion for this type of acuracy.

al-alo, basically, you provide night shots of the area to your councilmember or at a community forum with city leadership and request change-outs. It was through the work of Steve Stepniak and Peter Merlow from Public Works and Engineering that the lease situation was discovered to have been up for our lighting. they then walked the street and both the city and National Grid performed light metering to discover the lack of effectiveness. All these steps led to the change out.

Jolopy, thanks for the kudos. We never knew about the lease situation until Steve told us. That seems like a smart program as it saves the city some bucks.

blackrocklifer, I have heard tell of these spots in the Village of Black Rock. From my understanding, the Village of Black Rock was incorporated as a town in 1839 and it wasn't until 1853 that the City of Buffalo annexed the Town of Black Rock. So, as far as history goes, yes, the Village of Black Rock had these two public gathering places that may have predated Johnson Park, but the spaces were not part of the City of Buffalo until 1853.

For all, I believe the city saw a concerted effort by the WVRG in having the Johnson Park Restoration Fund opened last summer. We were hell bent on acquiring the funds ourselves and the city found a way to assist us in reducing our budget through this line item. That's why forming partnerships are essential to projects such as these. The WVRG has taken a strong stance to provide a list of possible solutions when entering into issue discussions with government. We get further this way rather than just complaining and it's a win-win for everyone. Just think, the city is now going to use this installation as a model for other areas. It opened the doors for the future.

Geesh, not bad for a new WVRG member, bt. You have learned your lessons well, grasshopper. Now I can kick back a bit - whew!

Thanks for the training (and the e-mail that I copyed and pasted from) Marilyn. I still can't get over how the park looked ten years ago and how it looks now. Great stuff!

blackrocklifer, one of the things I have learned from this new apartment and neighbors is they are very good with communication and they never give up. They also use folks that can't do much physical work to do research on the web, like me! I get a chance to learn more about the neighborhood and it's history this way and still feel like I'm part of the big picture even though ,y opinion counts, I like to contribute to!