 Phase I: Alyssa Coffin (left) and Allison Paschke consider options to accompany a new tree at 155 Chestnut. In the background, another target for planting. 27 April 17.  Phase II: Bollards in place. Plants and pencil-thin sapling protected. 20 May 2017. Phiotos: Images de Norbert. | The project has turned the corner and moved onto Elbow St. Congratulations to Allison Paschke for spearheading this drive to brighten things up in the District. (If the City won't send a streetsweeper through every now and again, and if re-paving the macadam that passes for pavement on our streets is not going to happen anytime soon, at least things are looking brighter on the sidewalks.) In an updating e-Mail message, Allison wrote: "Many thanks to the Doran Building Condo Association for funding, and to Olin Thompson for helping with the painting." "If other buildings would like tree guards, please contact me. If they pay for fabrication and someone will volunteer to help with painting, I will measure, order, help paint, and install." Then she added: "If anyone would like to help me paint the bollards, that would be great too." ORIGINAL POST: 5/22/2017, in which we saw Allison Paschke and her henchperson Alyssa Coffin embarking on the project: First we get five new trees... and now it's flowers. When 150 Chestnut St. got a tree from the City, and Brown U. sent a team to plant said tree, that was great (see District Clean-up Story). Seizing the opportunity, 150 Chestnut's Allison Paschke thought that a flower or two could spiff up the newly planted tree cuts and an empty tree cut or two that didn't meet the City Forester's criteria for proper tree planting. So, in late April Paschke and Alyssa Coffin set to work at brightening up the block. Phase I: exploratory planting in front of 150 Chestnut and across the street at 155. Then 150 decided that bollards might protect their new, extremely vulnerable sapling and planted a couple. Phase II: Paschke and Coffin have been at work, again. More flowering plants at 150 and day lilies planted in that empty square at the corner of Elbow and Chestnut. Now we wait for the lilies to sprout. Small projects, big benefits for the District. Get ready: Paschke has further plans; she's looking for volunteers to pitch in. |
|
0 Comments
 As you drive around the District, it becomes clear that no one is paying attention to the placement or maintenance of traffic signs and signals with any diligence. One observer has timed the traffic light at Clifford and Chestnut remaining red for nearly 5 minutes for Chestnut St. motorists on many occasions. The situation gets reported to the Traffic Department, they push a button or throw a lever and for a few days the light behaves... until it doesn't. One-way streets are haphazardly marked at intersections. The situation is not helped by building that edge narrow sidewalks and create blind intersections. Taken together with the Rhode Island habit of running yellow and — not infrequently — red lights, there's rich potential for disaster. The JDA has begun an informal inventory of missing, damaged, misplaced and otherwise confusing street signs. The results were posted on 15 May 2017. UPDATE 13 June 17: The traffic department has been at work and some situations have been corrected: 1. They've put up a Do Not Enter sign at Richmond and Clifford. 2. They replaced the damaged sign on Chestnut St. near Nick-n-Nee's. 3. They picked up the abandoned stop sign at the end of Parsonage St. MISSING SIGNS DAMAGED SIGNS UNREADABLE, CONFUSING & OBSCURED SIGNS A lot of stuff gets tossed aside in the District. Stolen purses and book bags. Empty or half-full beer bottles. For months an Everlast punching bag has been lying on the curb on Friendship St. (did some mug knock it out?). Shoes. Bits of costume jewelry, appropriate, one suggests, for the Jewelry District. Sundry items of clothing. And tons, literally, of other sstuff. Much of the debris arrives early on Saturday and Sunday mornings, after the bars close. But many other bits and pieces land at District curbs, in vacant lots, parking lots and lots of other places at all times of the day and night. For example, why has the former Victory Plating site become a collection point for hubcabs. Nearly a dozen lie just inside the fence along the Allen's Ave. side of the site.   September 21, 2016. Photos: 116 Aerials
 Another year goes by, must be time for the annual mowing on the disappearing sidewalk along the parking lot at 55 Claverick Street. (See last year's crop, HERE)
Even though our park is desolate and derelict and dusty, it remains an interesting place to visit for the passing scene, both natural and man-made. Sometimes both. And sometime mysterious or at least a little puzzling. You can find more about past events in previous posts in this section. Who knows what was going on, but at 5:46 pm Thursday night, January 14th, South Street Landing's work site was a blaze of light inside and out. Did some one forget to turn the lights out when they quit for the day at 3:00?  Photo: Rocket Images, Ltd.  Who or what is Big Underwear.? The power is everywhere, they say, whoever they are, and whatever the slogan means. A walk around the District turns up interesting sights. Along with street signage anomalies, unexplained happenings and peculiar (or thoughtless obstructions) on the sidewalks cataloged further down the Topics Page, there are intriguing visitors who pass through. Here's the first one for 2016: The Big Underwear bus. Go figure. Or is it GO, Figure! With a warning that anyone who's allergeric to bees might want to keep away from this tree on Clifford Street one tree west of Claverack St., here are some shots of the hiveless honey bees that arrived in the District on June 4th. They were still there on the morning of the 6th. If these things worry you, be reassured, sort of: their numbers appear to be diminishing. While we were battling to keep the PawSox in Pawtucket and off our park land, Hartford, Connecticut, was busily building a new minor league ball park. Things are not going all that well, according to an article in the Hartford Courant. Not regular readers of that paper we would have missed the story, but thanks to Beth Comery at Providence Daily Dose, you can read all about it right here.
The stadium's running late, way over budget and the owners of the team are holding out a baseball cap to be filled, if you please, with another $25,000,000 of public money. Have we dodged that bullet? As the Providence Daily Dose suggests: Follow No New Stadium for Providence on Facebook and keep up with any new developments. It’s not over.  Photo: Greensward Digital Don't know when it happened, but with the exception of the 5-gallon water bottle poised on a stick and a stack of water or gas pipes at the edge of the former roadway, all the construction detritus, scraps, shards, fragments of 2 x 4s and spare bricks just disappeared from the center of our Park.
Some or another person has run an earth mover around smoothing things down, removing a mound of hardened asphalt and generally tidying up the place. It's hardly a smooth place to run around flinging frisbies, but we're definitely getting somewhere! Sad to say, some people still seem to regard it the place as a receptacle for take-out coffee cups, empty beer cans and discarded springwater bottles (why concern for personal purity inside... but not outside, in our environment?). On the upside, people also toss away relatively clean plastic bags, which are convenient for use should you care to pick up stray bits of candy wrappers and such as you saunter along. Good bending exercise... a distraction while you wait for the dog you're walking to inventory the aromas left behind by fellow canine strollers. |
