Will Upper Warren Get New Streetlights?

During the Urban Renewal era, when Warren Street was given what was meant to be a Williamsburg look, with brick sidewalks and streetlights that imitated colonial lanterns, the look stopped at Park Place. A few years ago, when the City installed the new street lamps, they once again did not extend beyond the Public Square. Now that there are both new and established businesses on the far side of the park—Parlor, Wunderbar, the Crimson Sparrow, Wasabi, and (soon) Bonfiglio & Bread—there's an interest in embracing this stretch of Warren Street as part of the business district and replacing the cobra head streetlights with the lantern-like street lamps that grace the rest of the street.

Last night at the Public Works Committee meeting, DPW superintendent Rob Perry revealed that he had written $39,929 into his proposed budget for 2013 to purchase the bases, lamp poles, and conduit needed to replace the cobra head streetlights on upper Warren Street with the same street lamps found on the rest of Warren Street. (The luminaires are leased from National Grid.) Unfortunately, this amount is not sufficient to eliminate the utility poles, which was done for the rest of Warren Street more than thirty years ago, but it's a start. Perry reports that this budget item survived the initial review by the BEA (Board of Estimate and Apportionment). Let's hope it survives all subsequent reviews as well.