The last couple trees are being planted today and tomorrow. I believe the crew from Kuss Brothers was on East and West Fairview today finishing up over there and just have 2 more trees to drop in on Union Blvd near Center Street. That should bring the total up to 250 trees for the first planting. More to follow.
Alot of things make up the facade of a property. Starting the farthest out and working in:
Wires that attach to the house - you likely have an electrical connection, a telephone connection and at least 1 - 6 cable connections. Yes, I have counted 6 seperate wires attaching to a single building. How those wires are run to your property and to your neighbors can make a difference in the Design of the Streetscape of your block and the value of your property. Wires can come from the street or maybe the alley in the back. Wires should come in perpendicular to the street, not at an angle across your neighbors air space etc. You should only have the connections you need, trying to minimize the duplication etc. Wires go the property and then wire is used INSIDE the building to run to various rooms.
Sidewalks are part of the facade and part of the streetscape of the block. Some people have very nice sidewalks. Some people don’t. Not only does it affect your property value but the value of the whole block. Talk to your neighbors with bad sidewalks. You can save money by all doing it at the same time if everybody needs it!
Street Trees - I recently walked around just about the entire western half of the NbNW Neighborhoods to get the Tree Inventory started. There are some beautiful mature trees….and there are some trees that might cost you your house and your kids college money if it comes down and takes out your neighbors house. PLEASE take a look out the window at the trees that are 36-42 inches wide that are leaning heavily toward your house, the neighbors house or the street, split trunks, all the growth on one side…..DANGER WILL ROBINSON!!!! Get those looked at by a tree person as soon as you can.
Satellite Dishes - yes, they get rid of the wires and I like that part. What detracts from the facade is when the dish is placed in the easiest possible place for it to make the connection. Dishes belong on the roof - not on the porch or just outside the bay window. How about 1 to a building rather than one for every receiver you have?
Porches/Steps/Doorways/Exterior Lighting - most of the properties in the North by Northwest Neighborhoods are probably at least 75 years old. They have some nice architectural meat on their bones. Don’t dumb down the property by stripping away that detail. Go the extra mile and do it right. Concrete steps should get replaced with poured concrete steps, not wood, not prefab concrete steps that don’t match. Railings should get replaced with what was there originally, not deck sticks for a suburban deck, not plastic. Doorways, I’ll take some pictures today of some doorways I have in mind. You tell me which enhances the value of the property.
Bay Windows - The right windows can make a giant difference in the qualify of life. They can save you money on heating and cooling as well as virtually eliminate outside noise. Double and triple pane windows with argon gas and varying glass thickness can literally repel sound. Restoring the woodwork on your bay window and painting with a multi-colored theme in historic colors can do alot for the value of your house. If your neighbor across the street does it, it can do alot for your view.
Go outside today. Take a fresh look at your block through a visitors eyes. What do you see that can be improved. You would be amazed at what happens when one person does something….other people start doing other things and suddenly, it looks alot better.
Part of this massive greening effort in the neighborhoods that make up the North by Northwest Initiative involves taking an inventory of all the trees. You may see me standing close to a tree with a gizmo typing on the screen with a pen. This is a Trimble GPS device that is very accurate. We capture location information so we can add these trees as a map layer. We also capture info on the condition of the tree, , size, species of the tree, sidewalk treatment (tree well, grass strip, brick strip etc.) and overhead obstructions (power, phone and cable wires).
This data and the maps that come from the data help us satisfy grant requirements, plan our next planting effort, keep track of trees in case they are removed and not replaced, monitor species in case of infestation or some sort of species blight or other threat, and let’s the City Urban Forester know of trees that need a look that might be a danger to pedestrians, cars and homes. Look for tree inventory pics once we wrap it up. Hopefully by the end of the year!
With all this talk of trees, and hordes of people driving around to look at the new trees ( 
) I thought I might mention this. We will offer the opportunity to every address where a tree can be planted. Once we plant every street, we will take another look at streets where we planted and revisit the addresses that refused a tree. I’m not going into reasons, just accept that in some places trees were not planted.
Maybe in 3-4 years when we have planted maybe another 500+ trees some of those properties will have changed hands and the new owners might be more receptive to a new tree. Maybe it’s still the same owner and they have changed their minds and will accept the tree.
The registered letters cost $5.71 cents each. The mailing cost for this planting was $1427.50. That’s the cost of 3 trees. I think we had about a 6-8% refusal rate so that’s about 16-18 trees that were refused. You will be able to see who refused by driving down these streets and looking for obvious gaps. Sometimes it’s just not possible to plant a tree given sidewalk width issues, proximity to driveways and corners etc. so factor that in as well.
Anyway, just wanted to say that we will come back around again and see if we can fill these gaps.
Spoke with the folks from Kuss Brothers on Friday. Today they will begin the greening of 5th Avenue from Prospect Avenue to Union Blvd. That should take the better part of the week. There are also about 5 trees left to go on West Fairview Street. All of this should be wrapped up by the end of the week for a total of 250 trees!! What a difference that is gonna make when these trees leaf out in the spring.
Luminaria Night is quickly approaching. Block Captains are receiving their packets this week. Look for letters stuffed in your mailbox starting on November 12th. Luminaria Night is a night where people put luminaria out on the sidewalk in front of their houses. Luminaria Night has been going on for 10 years. Last year there were 55,000 luminaries out on Bethlehem streets.
This year we are looking to make a splash with luminaria night in the North by Northwest Neighborhoods. If you don’t get a letter and want to participate or you are interested in being a block captain, contact Debbie Delgrosso at 610-865-3757 or ddelgrosso1@juno.com.
The kits are $10 bucks and have 10 luminaries. They are spaced every 3 feet on the sidewalk so one kit will cover 30 feet. If you need additional kits, they are $5 each. The kits have the candles and the sand to hold the bags as well.
So, talk to your neighbors, plan a social event, get those cameras ready and don’t forget to clean up the bags on the morning of the 14th! In case of rain/snow, the inclement weather date is the 14th. For more info visit www.newbethanyministries.org.
Ok, we probably have about 200 of the 300 trees in for this fall so far. Late yesterday, I started the tree inventory using GIS tools which map the tree locations and take note of other factors like the sidewalk treatment and the presence of overhead wires and what kind of wires.
Trees need things to live just like us. Most important to them would be regular and adequate water. We can help the trees get established. They will be especially thirsty this spring as more than half of their roots are taken when they are balled and baled and moved to their forever homes. So please, water these trees as often as you can. I heard from Allentown and they are using water gators on some new trees. These are bag collars around the tree that hold and slowly release gallons of water. School kids are encouraged to carry a water bottle and empty the water bottle into the water gator. Every little bit helps.
A big way to help is the size of the tree well. Trees get water from rain, the more ground space they have that isn’t concrete, the more water they can get. The size of the tree wells we cut is limited in part by ordinance concerning width of sidewalks and partly by cost. Homeowners could go further and make a longer tree well parallel with the curb. If you were able to take out more concrete and possibly fill that with bricks, more water would be able to reach the roots. Taking all the concrete out parallel to the curb and putting a grass strip back in would also help.
Another way to help is tree trimming. We have a seminar called TreeTenders coming again in the spring. Trees are trees and not bushes. The growth should be directed up, not out at the ground to 5ft level. I carry tree trimming tools with me and have taken the TreeTenders course to know what/how to trim. Please DON’T use a ladder. If you are trimming a tree on a ladder, you need a permit from the city and maybe it’s time to call a pro at that point. But, just as we guys shave every day, we can do some basic tree grooming that trains these trees to grow up and have a nice shape. Sometimes it’s too late. There are a few trees at Goepp and Main that missed their grooming appointments and look like weak trees because of it. Ultimately, those trees will probably come down and as they stand, are not really an asset to property.
Another thing the trees need is some respect. As Rodney Dangerfield says…….I don’t get no respect. Watch the car doors, if you drive a truck, watch when you pull in/out and don’t break branches. Eventually, the tree will grow up and over where people park but in the first couple years, take some care with the vehicles. A ripped off main branch will leave a lasting scar on the tree. Imagine if you were getting a haircut and you elbowed the sytlist and he/she slipped and cut off a huge chunk of your hair. It wouldn’t be pretty would it? Same goes for trees, except they may never recover.
Let’s talk about overhead wires. While it’s unlikely anyone will be moving their electric service wires or that the main electric/cable/phone trunk lines will move, we can take a look at our phone/cable wires. Could your cable wires be rerouted to avoid being directly over the trees? Do you have cable wires attached that you aren’t using? Ask that they be removed. Do you have cable/phone wires crossing your airspace that feed the neighbors house? Demand the cable/phone company rerun those wires perpendicular to the feed over the person’s airspace that is actually using that service. What about switching to a dish and loosing the wire altogether! BUT, please mount the dish on the roof, not on the porch. Don’t get me started on that! Phones - We don’t have a home phone, just cells. There is also phone service from your cable company or cable service from your phone company. Another opportunity to loose a wire. So, next time your outside, look up at that mess of wires and see if there is something you can do to improve the streetscape. Wan’t a good example, take a look at 5th Avenue and 6th Avenue. Fifth is criss crossed with cable feeds. It’s hard to find the sky looking up through all that mess. Sixth Ave has no wires. The feeds come from the alley.
I’ll be out again today doing more tree inventory work. If you see me with the yellow Trimble GIS/GPS unit in hand, wave hi or come over and chat!
Kuss Brothers will be busy today on the lower stretch of 3rd Avenue between Union Blvd and the Route 378 entrance. Depending on how people exit Route 378, this could be one of their first views of Bethlehem. You know what they say about first impressions!
Going left off the ramp toward Broad Street will be worked on in the Spring as part of the PennDot Hometown Streets Project.
In talking with the tree crew, they can do about 13-15 trees a day so they should be able to cover the lower part of 3rd Avenue and hopefully start on 5th Avenue tomorrow.
Did you know that more trees correlates with…
Just a quick note about siting trees. Without getting into exact figures here there are some restraints for where street trees can go. They have to be a certain distance from a corner and a driveway, they have to be spaced a certain distance apart and there needs to be adequate sidewalk space for pedestrian traffic.
In travels around the target area with the above in mind, there are some streets that are very very difficult on which to place trees. Ettwein Street, Garrison Street are probable the most difficult streets. Both of those streets are also very narrow streets as well.
A street that has the problem of not enough sidewalk space is E. North Street. In order to fill E. North Street with trees, we would actually have to narrow the roadway a couple feet. While not out of the question, it is very very expensive to do so. The road itself is wide enough to probably be able to loose a few feet, it’s probably more a question of money.
So…while we are putting trees in, you guys keep your eyes open for people taking trees out without a permit. If you see a tree being removed, call the city forester, Cindy Smith. She will check to see if they have a permit and make sure they replace the dead/diseased tree with an appropriate species.
The no parking signs are up on 3rd Avenue today. That means the crew from Kuss Brothers will be out jacking out concrete, digging holes and planting trees to make this street more green. That means, cooler temps, less noise, more oxygen (yeah!) and more privacy. Think what those trees will look like as they grow! Today they will probably tackle from Prospect to Broad Street and tomorrow, head down to Union Blvd to the Route 378 gateway.
2nd Avenue was completed and apparently the buzz at the voting spot was the new trees. It’s quite a difference on the lower part of 2nd that was without trees. Now 2nd Avenue from W. Broad to Prospect Avenue is again a tree lined street. That’s probably a 10% boost in property value right there!
5th Avenue - your turn is coming. Probably beginning of next week.
