Not content with scraping the ground in the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park clean, Claremont - the self-proclaimed City of Trees - is set to become the City of Lights, or so a reader says:
SUBJECT: Wilderness Park Lights
DATE: Saturday, September 20, 2008, 12:09 PM
TO: Claremont Buzz
Dear Insider,
We were walking up into the Wilderness Park a few weeks ago when we noticed the city had dug trenches along Mills north of Mt. Baldy Rd. The trenches were for conduit and wiring that ran to cement stanchions that were a couple feet high. The wires and conduit stuck up out of the cement and there were 4 bolts sticking up around the conduit. I snapped some pictures and am sending them with this note.
If I didn't know better, I'd say the city's planning on lighting up the parking lots with street lights on big metal poles. I live up here by the park and am concerned. The area has pretty strict lighting restrictions, which most people here kinda like. It's nice at night with the quiet and the dark to take a walk out and hear the owls hooting and the frogs croaking.
Any idea what's up or what genius down at city hall thought of this?
Not a clue. Maybe something to do with the break-ins into cars in the Wilderness Park overflow parking lot at Mills Ave. and Mt. Baldy Rd. Of course, those happened during the day and the park is supposed to be closed at dusk according to what the city had promised when they opened it. So there shouldn't be any cars parked there at night that would require lights.
Now that the city's plowed up Thompson Creek, maybe they're just planning on lighting up the area so everyone can admire the city's handiwork, like lighting up the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower. Or maybe they're planning on nighttime plowing - more efficient if you can go 24-7, you know.
Or maybe they're just planning on streetlights everywhere in that area. They've insisted on putting in 100-ft sports lights into the Padua Park site on the high-end of a slope 80-feet above Padua Ave., so they might as well illuminate the rest of the area while they're at it, only they ought not prattle on about sustainability if they aren't going to be consistent about it.
City of Lights or City of Hypocrites? Take a look at the reader's photos and decide for yourself:
(Click on Images to Enlarge)
City of Lights I
City of Lights II
City of Lights III
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