To be fair to Charles Gordon, we didn’t have access to all of his image files this morning, so I figured that it would be best to post additional visuals to go hand in hand with his original post. In these images we see a number of the issues that he pointed out, including the various lamp standard designs, the interruptions in sidewalks and roadways, his references to benches, signs, garbage cans, etc.
To me, there have been so many great advancements at Canalside, that make many of these highlighted inconsistencies even more apparent. There was a time when nobody was visiting this section of the waterfront, and in turn nobody cared about the details. Now that times have changed, and Central Wharf is heading in the right direction, Charlie is right in pointing out the aesthetic fixes that can be made to really brand the district and tie it all together. While there is an effort underway to supersize Canalside, The City must work alongside the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation to clean up the inherent problems in order to create a true sense of space. As Charlie puts it so well:
“Our waterfront planners and leaders cannot move forward on bigger picture items until we learn lesson ONE: Cut the grass and pick up the trash.”
The following image are not in consecutive order…