It's all about lines of sight, isn't it?

Come to think of it, lighting up the Sherman Minton might make sense after all.

As a reminder, NA Confidential has maintained a strict neutrality about proposals to "light up" the bridge. Whether this equanimity will survive the pandemic is another question entirely, but for now it holds.

Previously:

Here's a "Light the Sherman" (Minton bridge) update.

GREEN MOUSE presents NAWBANY WEEK IN REVIEW for 14 February 2020.

Overheard by the Green Mouse at a otherwise deserted local hangout: "Gahan's like a kidney stone -- he, too, shall pass."

Let's hope, but as we observe Valentine's Day 2020, it remains that 46 idolatrous months are left to go amid Gahan III: For the Love of Money. It's never too early to begin handicapping "next," so let's look at the presumptive favorites should our monetizer-for-life decide to take a pay cut and make this term his last.

With Courtney Lewis unexpectedly decamping for a job in Louisville -- women and minorities need not apply for advancement in Newbany given Dear Leader's white male goon ol' boy network -- one springboard lies vacant, and Deaf Gahan has a position to fill as assistant to the city attorney.

After all, it takes two people to lift the typical bond bonus.

These days most of the gratuitous propaganda and photo ops are being handled by redevelopment's Josh Staten, although this has more to do with the city's invisible communications director than intentional campaign prep. Staten would be the ideal purely technocratic candidate, except that four-syllable words like "technocratic" are banned in Nawbany by ordinance (one of the few we actually enforce).

Jason Applegate has two months under his belt as an at-large city councilman, which is enough time to have sold Extol advertising to every municipal vendor. He'll be ambitious, whether from internal or external sources, and he previously has run a city-wide political race, which is important.

So has David Brewer, current township trustee. He's probably the oddsmakers' favorite to follow in Gahan's wake, at least at this point. Second most likely to aspire to power is current police chief Todd Bailey. Has the chief managed to escape the stain of his support for Irv Stumler in 2011? Bossman Jeff has a long memory when it comes to perceived slights.

These are your mayoral contenders for 2023, but only the Shadow (Squire Adam) knows for sure, and he's busy lining up Deaf's photo-op with Michael Bloomberg.

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A month ago the Green Mouse asked why three street lights on the orphaned south side Market (between State and Pearl) had been non-functional since well before Harvest Homecoming last year.

Lo and behold, the sacred gatekeepers appear to have been listening, and the job has been passed to Duke Energy.

Yes, it was a slow news week. Still, there were two headlines.

Pillar Awards: It's high time Develop New Albany recognized downtown businessman Todd Coleman.

9 million tons of Duke Energy's coal ash, the EPA's proposal to loosen regulations about it, and Earthjustice's lawsuit against the EPA.

As an aside, Recbar 812 was packed all last weekend in terms of physical space, even as expert denizens of cyberspace continued to complain bitterly that no one goes there owing to crappy parking. Similarly, as local media fawned over the announcement that 190+ apartment units will fill the former StemWood site on Grant Line Road, no one asked about the details or the subsidies, just decried the effect on traffic.

It's Valentine's Day, and many of you will celebrate it by washing your damn car.

In closing, at Curbed is a commentary about a phenomenon that Greg "Indiana Landmarks" Sekula recently discovered: "Public meetings are broken. Here’s how to fix them."

Held at times of day that can make it hard for many people to attend without missing work, usually without day care options, and sometimes in locations not favorable to those with disabilities or who rely on transit, these meetings already exclude many groups before they even start. Then there’s the matter of format: Experts and officials typically sit behind a table and give speeches and make presentations, with a microphone set up to take comments from neighbors who can spare the time to spend hours waiting for a few minutes on the mic. No surprise that a Knight Foundation study from 2010 found that attending a public meeting didn’t make residents feel more or less connected to their communities.

Join us again next week as New Agony prepares for an early spring.

Here's a "Light the Sherman" (Minton bridge) update.

Light the Sherman (Facebook)

Light the Sherman is an initiative to add decorative lighting to the Sherman Minton Bridge during the forthcoming time of bridge rehabilitation work. The movement's theory is that lighting the bridge will draw businesses and visitors to downtown New Albany and the Portland neighborhood in Louisville.

Following is an update from November 22, 2019. As I've noted previously, NA Confidential is neutral about this proposal.

Hello Everyone. Sorry for the delay.

So there are a few of us working behind the scenes to pave the way for fundraising to begin. The first step was confirming that the Federal government wouldn’t prohibit lighting additions. We have heard back from one of our senators that the project is indeed a possibility without any prohibition if funding can be identified.

We’ve also heard from INDOT that they are supportive of the idea, with the caveat that functional repair is priority of course and that we identify our own funding. This is a good start. Most of the city councilmen on the Indiana side I’ve spoken with are favorable to the idea and the mayor has stated he thinks it’s a good idea in principle.

This is a non-partisan initiative and we want to keep it that way. Reviving Downtown New Albany and Portland/Shawnee is in everyone’s best interest. Making the riverfronts and greenway an attractive place to be will increase property values, increase small business startups, increase sales tax revenue, increase employment, all yielding more funding for the city to create a snowball effect of redevelopment and help with essential needs as well.

The next steps are to establish a leadership team and/or coalition to coordinate the design and fundraising. We will likely be creating a non-profit corporation very soon to appropriately capture fundraising and then become a legal funding arm to INDOT to hopefully make this happen.

Lighting the bridge is merely a spark to drive businesses, residents, tourists and foot traffic to want to be in sight of the bridge. It should be thought of as part of the overall picture of redeveloping the riverfront and greenway on both sides of the river.

When it comes to lighting one up, best to be careful what you wish for, lest politicians bogart the joint.

I'll freely admit there are times when I just plain don't get it on a personal level, and this bridge lighting and decorating idea is one of those times.

Note that I fully respect the viewpoint of proponents. Good luck in your efforts. Rock on. At this precise moment I'm not boarding that train, merely regretting we have no trains to board. However, I'm not above buying popcorn, having a seat in the bleachers and being a spectator. Maybe I'll change my mind. 

IT'S LIT: New Albany residents push for decorative lighting on Sherman Minton Bridge, by John Boyle (League of Tom May Voters)

NEW ALBANY — In the coming years, the Sherman Minton Bridge will get a facelift in the form of a major renewal project.

The rehabilitation will cost anywhere from $90 million to $105 million, with an expected start date in early 2021. How the timeline of the project will look is still up the air, as Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) officials are still in the process of deciding whether to move forward with a full closure or a partial closure.

While the looming prospect of impeding traffic flow on the major artery in any capacity is cause for concern to some residents and business owners, others are looking at the possibilities in a more creative light. This week, a Facebook page called "Light the Sherman" was launched, attracting over 200 likes in the few days it's been active.

The move appears to have been inspired by the Sherman Minton's sister bridge, the Hernando de Soto Bridge in Memphis, Tenn. While that bridge shares a similar design, there is one obvious difference — it has decorative lighting, similar to that found on the Big Four Bridge in Jeffersonville.

The idea has gotten quite a bit of attention on social media, with the page organizers calling on people to convince local members of Congress to allocate money for the installation ...

Although I remain open to persuasion, bridge lighting strikes me as a want, as opposed to a need. It's also a distraction from other more genuine needs.

I believe any money generated to pay for creatively lighting the Sherman Minton bridge -- by the way, where exactly is this money coming from? -- would be better spent scattered among numerous enhancement projects along the waterfront, rather then illuminating it from above like a gaudy billboard (see photo above).

To me, this is another example of the One Big Grandiose Project syndrome, rather than the two dozen smaller projects actually impelled by participatory grassroots partnerships, with the problem being that OBGPs tend to move with lightning speed away from the grassroots, and into the hands of usual design suspects like HWC Engineering or their bridge lighting equivalents.

The result usually is generic pay-to-play pablum like baseball Hall of Famer Jim "Do You Know I Live in Carmel?" Rice's HWC Market Street Mussolini tribute.

In this vein, tourism's Russell Goodwin makes a very good point in the newspaper article.

Studies have shown that such aesthetic ventures do often translate into more visitors and money spent by them in the local economy. Russell Goodwin of SoIN Tourism said the key factor is collaboration and communication between project officials and local stakeholders, such as residents and business owners.

Let's not forget the templates and schemata of "collaborative" public input meetings in New Gahania ...

Joshua Poe explains how those "public input" meetings are kept meaningless to maintain pre-determined outcomes.

As noted: I'm open to a rethink.

Until the evidence is mustered, I'm sticking to the imperative of many small improvements rather than one big one -- and don't use the Big Four in Jeffersonville as a counter-example, because it's the "big project" exception that proves the rule.

The Big Four Bridge is all about function as a non-automotive mobility device, and this function would remain completely intact without lighting (which cost more than $2 million) or the dreadfully redundant and intrusive classical music playing halfway across.

The Big Four's logic is applicable not to the Sherman Minton, but the K & I. That's the mobility project in need of prioritization.

Nationalize that mutha, now. I bet President Sanders will.

After windows, lighting?

It might not come in handy until the re-arrival of winter's darkness, but Tony Beard's logo on the south side of Bank Street Brewhouse now is illuminated, thanks to Electric Dave at Resch Construction.

We've spoken much about the importance of glass, as opposed to boarded-up windows, but the use of lighting perhaps is neglected. Add it to the civic list, please. UEA facade grants, anyone?

Does the UEA still exist?