Detroit Lakes is planning to build a bike path from the Pavilion along West Lake Drive to the Pelican River, and on Tuesday city council members heard feedback from residents and business owners affected by the project.
City officials, planning boards and city council committees have already looked at the options and pretty much know where the paved multi-use trail should run.
But, as City Administrator Bob Louiseau said at an earlier meeting, “It’s good to get feedback if there’s something we’ve missed.”
From the Pelican River (just past the bowling alley) to County Road 6, the most likely route is on the west side of the road. Curb and gutter would be added on that side only to raise the trail above street level. Without that grade separation more space would be needed between the trail and the street.
The downside is that the trail will have to cross the street, since the rest will likely be built on the beach side of the street.
From County Road 6 to Legion Road, the trail will likely be on the lake side of the street. The roadway will essentially be shifted away from the lake, allowing the footprint to remain unchanged on the lake side — the edge of the trail will align with the edge of the current roadway.
“There are not a lot of options for this one,” because of the cramped space, said City Engineer Jon Pratt.
The best way to obtain grade separation on that stretch is to reduce the driving lanes from 12 feet wide to 11 feet and move the street about 6 feet away from the lake, making room for the bike path, median, curb and gutter.
That would allow for stormwater runoff on the county state-aid road to be treated before it goes into the lake. Currently it runs right in. That would also help control shoreline erosion along the lake in that area.
The downside, of course, is that homes and businesses away from the lake would be that much closer to the street. Several affected property owners spoke against the plan for that reason, with one saying that it would put the street about 20 feet from her home.
Pratt said some trees will also be lost to the project, although the city hopes to minimize tree loss on the lake side to prevent erosion.
The city utilities department will study the feasibility of burying the power lines along the roadway, since they will have to be moved anyway.
City policy on new street lighting for roadway projects will also be followed, Louiseau said, in answer to a resident who said that section of roadway is now pretty dark.
On the stretch from Legion Road to the Pavilion, the trail would also be located on the beach side of the roadway, separated from the street by a median, curb and gutter. There would be room for two 11-foot-wide driving lanes and parking on just one side of the street — most likely the beach side.
Several people spoke in support of using the trail to replace the narrow sidewalk that separates grass from sand on the City Beach.
That option is not highly favored, because little kids often run between the grass and the sand and could easily be hit by a bicycle.
But several people said it’s better to be hit by a bike than a car, and one man said after they’d been hit once or twice they’d learn to look for bikes.
In 2003, his swollen, hazy, sodium-coloured sun brooded over the vast volume of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. It was an artwork that fired the imaginations of 2 million visitors who played with, were provoked by and plunged themselves into the curious atmosphere of The Weather Project, with its swirling mist and gigantic mirrors that covered the hall's ceiling.
Olafur Eliasson's new work, he hopes, will also draw on a community's desire to harness art for themselves, but this time he is working with an overt social purpose. His latest project, conceived as part of the London 2012 festival, is a solar-powered lamp that he and his engineer partner, Frederik Ottesen, have designed and developed. Plans are already in motion for the lamp to be widely distributed in the developing world, in partnership with NGOs including Plan International.
For the one in five of the world's population who live off the electricity grid, Eliasson hopes that it will change lives, allowing people to read, work and interact at a fraction of the cost, over time, of using kerosene lamps.
Little Sun, as the lamp is called, has risen out of the ashes of Eliasson's Cultural Olympiad project, Take a Deep Breath, which the Olympic Lottery Distributor (OLD) declined to fund after details of the proposal were leaked to a newspaper. The project would have asked participants to inhale and exhale on behalf of a cause or idea, and then capture the thought on a "breath bubble" on a website.
Explaining why he had developed a social project, the Berlin-based Danish artist said: "Art is always interested in society in all kinds of abstract ways, though this has a very explicit social component. The art world sometimes lives in a closed-off world of art institutions, but I still think there's a lot of work to show that art can deal with social issues very directly."
The fact that the lamp – with its cheery petalled face – had been designed by an artist was important, he said. "People want beautiful things in their lives; they want something that they can use with pride … everyone wants something that's not just about functionality but also spirituality."
The lamps will also have a life at the Tate, where they will be on sale at a developed-world price of 16.50. And, starting on 28 July, and for every Saturday night until 23 September, the surrealism rooms at Tate Modern will be plunged into darkness after normal opening hours, and visitors invited to visit them by the light of Little Sun lamps. It will be a conscious echo of an act of the artist Man Ray who, at the opening of the seminal International Surrealist Exhibition of 1938 in Paris, supplied visitors with torches to illuminate the artworks. "It is a way of experiencing having no light," said Eliasson, "but also a way of using the Little Sun to guide yourself, as if it were an eye."
Eliasson and Ottesen have met the initial costs of the lamp themselves, and have developed what they hope will be a successful business model through which the lamps can be sold locally, initially in Kenya, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, at both a worthwhile profit for local retailers and an affordable sum for consumers. The price to the eventual users in Africa will be around $10 (6.40). "If we don't sell 400,000 quite quickly, I will personally lose a lot of money," said Ottesen. Revenue raised will be put back into the project to help make it sustainable.
The Union County Housing Authority has a couple of energy-efficient homes for sale that will save the environment and you, some money.
For sale signs are up outside a new duplex on West Market Street near Lewisburg.
A project of the Union County Housing Authority, a federal grant helped make the homes green, to save energy and money.
“Well with energy costs rising so dramatically, the constituents that we serve are the folks who can benefit the most from having low energy costs,” said Bruce Quigley with the Union County Housing Authority.
The homes were built in about two months using many eco-friendly materials.
The unoccupied homes were monitored for a year to check energy-efficiency. UCHA officials said electric heating and cooling bills averaged only about $50 a month.
“These houses are significantly more energy-efficient than an Energy Star house. An Energy Star house is 15 percent more energy-efficient than a house just built to code. Our houses are 50 percent more efficient than an Energy Star house,” added Quigley.
Outside, the siding is recycled steel. A special heating system and overhangs help reduce costs to heat and cool the home.
“Orienting the building properly, having the overhangs be sized properly so you don’t get heat-gain from the sun in the summer, and you do get it a little in the winter when you want it,” said Quigley.
The inside features energy-efficient insulation, triple-glazed windows, L.E.D. lights, and Energy Star appliances.
Counter tops made of recycled paper and low-flow plumbing fixtures also help conserve resources.
“The environment`s very important, and if we can save on energy costs, it`s a great thing,” said project manager Gregory Walker.
The UCHA received a $500,000 HOME grant from the Department of Community and Economic Development to build the new duplex, as well as make two existing homes more energy-efficient.
One home on South Armory Drive is about 70 years old. New insulation and heating upgrades make it 30 percent more efficient than a home built to code, according to Quigley.
The homes, listed at $100,000 each, are intended for Prime Time home buyers, age 55 and older, and for people with disabilities.
Potential buyers must meet income requirements.
Open houses will be held Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. at the homes at 1308 West Market Street and 802 South Armory Drive in East Buffalo Township near Lewisburg.
In the past quarter-century, few artists wielded the combination of a deeply weird, subversive vision and an easy command over myriad materials quite like Mike Kelley.
The Michigan-born artist, who worked nearly his entire career in Los Angeles, was compulsively collaborative -- working with Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler and Sonic Youth, to name a few -- and always driven by an appetite for experimentation. Scanning the output of his three-decade career includes such far-flung endeavors as the noise rock band Destroy All Monsters, installations incorporating chintzy thrift store afghans and dolls, and a multimedia exhibition based on a trip to the Burning Man festival with fellow artist Michael Smith.
On the surface, Kelley's work was driven by an antagonistic sensibility, which often manifested itself in abject content and caustic ugliness. But Kelley, who killed himself in January at age 57, was unquestionably a devoted aesthete. His long-way-round approach to beauty never fully concealed that beauty was, in fact, the endgame.
In the past quarter-century, few artists wielded the combination of a deeply weird, subversive vision and an easy command over myriad materials quite like Mike Kelley.
The Michigan-born artist, who worked nearly his entire career in Los Angeles, was compulsively collaborative -- working with Paul McCarthy, Tony Oursler and Sonic Youth, to name a few -- and always driven by an appetite for experimentation. Scanning the output of his three-decade career includes such far-flung endeavors as the noise rock band Destroy All Monsters, installations incorporating chintzy thrift store afghans and dolls, and a multimedia exhibition based on a trip to the Burning Man festival with fellow artist Michael Smith.
On the surface, Kelley's work was driven by an antagonistic sensibility, which often manifested itself in abject content and caustic ugliness. But Kelley, who killed himself in January at age 57, was unquestionably a devoted aesthete. His long-way-round approach to beauty never fully concealed that beauty was, in fact, the endgame.
Mist makers work by employing sub-sonic vibrations on the surface of the pond’s water to create a thick mist on the surface of the pond. These mist makers are harmless to your fish, while creating an effect that will be a pleasure to watch and act as a talking point in any garden.
The Stowasis Disco Mister includes six small ceramic discs, which are the vibrating membranes that create mist on the surface of the water. For ultimate convenience this product comes with everything you need to install and safely power your pond mister, including colour changing LED lights, external transformer and 10 metres of cable.
But if you’re feeling really creative, you can also make use of the Stowasis Float for Disco Mister, which is a float attachment that ensures that the mister is operating at the correct depth as the water level changes. So all you have to do is plug it in and enjoy the show.
Or if only a show stopping light show will work for you then the Bermuda Pond Mister with Multi Light Change is the pond mister for you. As one of our most popular misters this product is capable of combining huge volumes of mist and 36 variously coloured lights, to create a truly particular display.
On the day it closed, Solyndra said it was laying off 1,100 full-time and temporary employees.
But 1,861 workers lost their jobs as the solar panel manufacturer shut its doors, according to U.S. Labor Department documents provided to The Bay Citizen under the Freedom of Information Act.
The documents also show the Fremont-based company increased production in 2011, even though it failed to sell all the panels it made the previous year.
By the time it closed last August, Solyndra had an unsold inventory of more than 23 megawatts – enough solar panels to power about 23,000 homes.
Analysts said the revelations are likely to add new fuel to the partisan fire surrounding the demise of Solyndra, which received a $535 million federal loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2009.
“Information like this represents a great deal of ammunition for Romney and his allies,” said Dan Schnur, a former Republican political consultant who now runs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.
Last month, Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential candidate, appeared outside the grounds of the shuttered factory with news cameras in tow and declared Solyndra to be a symbol of economic “failure.”
Two years earlier, President Barack Obama visited the company's Fremont headquarters and called its new plant, which was funded by the loan guarantee, a "testament to American ingenuity and dynamism."
In an email Tuesday, Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, the Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said the Labor Department documents reveal that "Solyndra was doing much, much worse" than the company and the Energy Department publicly acknowledged in the months before the company declared bankruptcy.
Upton has led a congressional investigation into Solyndra's failure. He and other Republicans have argued that the high-ranking Obama administration officials interceded on the company's behalf to get the loan guarantee.
"The more we learn by the day, the worse the news gets," he said.
The Energy Department and the White House Press Office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
For their part, industry officials downplayed the Labor Department's findings.
“Solyndra is one firm that made some unfortunate business decisions and does not represent the rest of the vibrant, growing U.S. market,” said Tom Kimbis, spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association, an industry trade group.
According the Labor Department’s internal report, 1,861 workers were “separated” from Solyndra during the year it went bankrupt.
On Sept. 15, Shig Hamamatsu, Solyndra's vice president of finance, responded to a Labor Department inquiry by saying that the company had laid off 1,094 full-time employees, along with 649 temporary workers, 82 contract employees and 14 workers classified as "other." He said the company planned to lay off 22 more workers the next day. Hamamatsu said that an additional 85 U.S. employees would be laid off "when their functions are no longer needed," which would bring the total number of displaced workers to 1,946.