Meetings of Interest in the Week Ahead
There are important meetings on the first two days of the week, but after that the calendar is meeting free as we approach Election Day on November 6.
- Tomorrow, Monday, October 29, there is a public information meeting about the reconstruction of the Ferry Street Bridge. Mayor Rick Rector, DPW superintendent Rob Perry, and representatives of the engineering firm Creighton Manning will present an update on the various regulatory requirements for the bridge and a preliminary design. After the presentation, there will be opportunity for public comment. The meeting takes place at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Room of the Hudson Area Library, 51 North Fifth Street.
- On Tuesday, October 30, Alderman Rich Volo (Fourth Ward) is holding an inaugural meeting of the Friends of the Hudson City Cemetery. Everyone interested in volunteering to help raise funds and do the work involved in documenting, preserving, and restoring Hudson's historic, National Register-eligible cemetery should attend the meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. in the Community Room of the Hudson Area Library, 51 North Fifth Street.
- Also on Tuesday, October 30, there is a public design charrette for the two new apartment buildings Hudson Housing Authority plans to construct on State Street across from Bliss Towers. The design charrette will address site plan and landscaping, building design, and floor plans. The event takes place from 6 to 9 p.m. in the Community Room at Bliss Towers, 41 North Second Street.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CAROLE OSTERINK
While there's no accounting for tastes, and we're a long way off from the days of the Roeblings, I'm not one to disparage the appearance of the existing Ferry Street Bridge. I especially love seeing it in paintings, and have enjoyed painting it (and repairing it) myself.
ReplyDeleteFollowing the bridge's successive modifications we'll never know if it's now more or less attractive than the day it was built. Either way, and no insult to the existing bridge, it's not antitechnological to acknowledge that civil engineers are capable of producing some of the dreariest and/or ill-fitted bridges.
Indeed, we've already placed and accepted aesthetic limits on the design simply by
choosing this or that engineering firm to stay within a fixed budget. Given the aesthetic shortcomings of the profession generally, and the City's statement two years ago that the purpose of the next bridge is purely functional, we can only hope the Creighton Manning engineers will show us examples of their previous bridge designs.
It's more plausible, though, that like every other "information meeting" we've attended in Hudson the purpose of the gathering is to reveal the design we'll have shoved down our throats.
If that's the case, as I predict, then the joke will be on our community of aesthetically-minded residents who've repeatedly proven themselves incapable and clueless regarding the fate and appearance of the local environment generally.