By Jim Sack

It is two photos of Creighton Street east of Hanna. Tell me what you think. Here is my observation. Compromise and waste.

Click to enlarge

You will quickly note the overhead power lines. They are ubiquitous in Fort Wayne as if the electrician has decided to put the wirings in your house on the outside of the walls, because, of course, it is cheaper than doing it right.

I&M, Comcast and the rest use the public right-of-way to string their lines because it is cheaper and because they really don’t care about the way it looks. Engineers will tell you that there are problems with buried lines that are not there with strands overhead.

Their values collide with city beautification. They are one step up from a garbage dump, one small step. Drive down Lake Avenue just past Randallia and look up, what could otherwise be a lovely drive is marred by strand on strand of heavy wire and unsightly poles.

Click to enlarge

Two notable effects of the poles in the air is the hack job tree trimmers, Asplundh to name one, does within our city. Flat tops. A shaved side. Lopsided trims to protect overhead lines. Happened to trees at my mother’s house a year or so ago, happened at one of my properties the other day. They “top” trees, they shave trees, they never, ever, however, do a tasteful job of trimming. Drive South Wayne and compare the hack job on the west side with the well formed trees on the east side. Just stupid. Why bother plant trees there, at all.

The other effect is on your home. Beside the value dropping sight of badly trimmed tress or overhead wires gracing your property there is always the menace of an ice storm to put your lights out for a week or so. Let it be known that when I&M calculates the cost of outages they do not include your costs, just theirs. In my neighborhood during the last big ice storm a couple Christmases back one house, the family away for the holidays, suffered over $40,000 in damage. There were other stories of burst pipes, flooded basements, buckled floors, crumbling walls. That does not count the sad waste of good steaks that some cow sacrificed so that I&M could prematurely thaw that T-bone. I&M does not calculate that into the cost of a storm, they do not calculate your losses when advocates call on them to bury lines. They say it would cost them too much to bury lines, they do not think of what it has cost you or will cost you. Tough luck.

So, back to the picture. It is the city’s effort at beautification gone astray. The light poles, among other things, give the area an industrial and undesirable look for residential redevelopment. So, the city decided to install ornamental lights, the old style, human-scale lights to spiffy up the area. They left the poles, however, in place. Too expensive to either bury the lines or reroute them. I would guess in the architects drawings presented to the city and neighborhood when the area beautification plan was unveiled the overhead poles were not included. Airbrushed out. Just the quaint lights and happy families walking the revitalized neighborhood with ornamental plantings to compliment the ornamental lights.

So, it is a little like putting new rims on an rust-bucket of a car. It is still an ugly car. And, it is a waste of money. The city has gone a step farther on Broadway: the ornamental, human-scale lights have been installed, but above them are the old, Berlin-wall-look cobra head lights that are better suited to an industrial area or an interstate ramp. And, running the length of Broadway are also the utility poles and tangle of wires.

This is, at best, half-assed urban renewal. What is that phrase about lipstick on a pig. Somebody thought that by putting up some pretty lights it would make a difference. It only, in reality, makes you wonder why they bothered to waste so much money to accomplish so little.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 13th, 2010 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Current Affairs, Fort Wayne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.