Each week, City Manager Tom Aspell grabs a bucket of balls and his clubs and heads to the driving range to crank a few. When he’s finished, he hijacks the nearest cart and retrieves the balls himself, dodging the chasing course attendant. And wouldn’t you know it? The tire marks from the cart spell out the city memo.
Dear Liza, there’s a hole
In the bridge, not the bucket
A hole in the approach deck to the Sewalls Falls Bridge was discovered June 29 and immediately covered by a structural plate, Aspell writes. Structural plates are significantly stronger than paper plates, and less humorous than vanity plates.
City and New Hampshire Department of Transportation bridge maintenance staff have inspected the bridge and discovered that, in addition to the area of the approach span deck that failed, several other areas need to be repaired to avoid future damage. These repairs are taking place this week. The bridge will be closed to all traffic until 3:30 p.m. on July 11, at which time it will reopen to a surprise party with cake . . . just don’t let its bridge friends ruin the surprise! Completion of the work is subject to weather conditions. Variable message boards will be placed along the corridors leading to the bridge, though some may only contain fortune cookie-style motivational quotes.
Soooo, we lied
But we were in the dark!
City staff has been working with the Downtown Complete Streets Project Design Team to have two mock-up light fixtures installed for review and comment by the public, Aspell writes. The two fixtures were scheduled to be installed July 2, on the west side of North Main Street, in front of Citizens Bank. The Insider may have therefore accidentally said they were already installed. Anyway, the lighting manufacturer attempted to install the fixtures, but, unfortunately there were some issues with the installation and, as a result, the fixtures were removed. Existentially, though, are they really fixtures if they were never there to begin with?
The design team is working to solve those problems and will look at another opportunity in the near future to showcase the lighting fixtures proposed for the projects. Might we suggest a runway show? Visit concordmainstreetproject.com for updates.
