Steve Thurston (2021)
Volunteer painters on Henry Street stand behind a sunburst-stenciled jersey wall. It uses a special glass-and-glitter infused paint.
A large handful of community members spent Sunday morning spray painting sunbursts onto jersey walls on Henry Street in downtown Saratoga Springs.
Erin Maciel of Urban Landscape Studio in Saratoga Springs said it was a way to get people thinking about city streets differently. For obvious reasons, streets are very car-focused, but streets are really public spaces, and the pandemic has everyone thinking about space differently.
“We were looking to create a ‘parklette’” even before the pandemic, she said. She credited her work on the Complete Streets initiative in Saratoga and the Henry Street Business Association for that idea.
Then the pandemic hit and pushed dining on Henry Street and elsewhere onto the sidewalks and into the parking lanes of streets. To add safety and define the restaurant space, the mammoth concrete blocks surround the dining tables on the street in front of Scallions, Henry Street Taproom and Flatbread Social.
Maciel said the new dining space can feel a bit European or like a person is on vacation when they are just dining outside. Perhaps the street could be closed regularly and turned into a plaza, she said.
“We can keep building on what this street can be,” she said, adding again that there might be other ways to rethink how the city uses streets.
Use for these sorts of spaces is something she has worked on in New York City. It was there that she met Jonathan Gross of Ruby Lake Glass, the winner of the 2014 Innovative Recycler of the Year for “creating beneficial use of recycled material in the area of Public Safety,” said Managing Member Jonathan Gross.
“We reclaim between 20 and 100 tons of recycled glass a week,” he said. It comes from electronics such as TV and cell phone screens.
The glass is crushed and colored and becomes an aggregate used in city streets, often for colored striping or lane coloring on bus and bike lanes. He said his company’s product has been used in Boston, New York, L.A. and Chicago, all coming out of a factory in Utica and a sales office in Richfield Springs, south of Herkimer. The tiny glass crystals add texture and color.
“It’s durable, colorful and skid resistant,” he said.
The batch of spray paint he created for this project also had glitter in it to add shine.
“We’ve been looking for ways to test out the product and see how it can be used,” Maciel, the landscape architect, said.
They spray painted the simple designs on the jersey walls.
Outdoor dining on sidewalks and in the street will end Oct. 31 unless the city council extends that deadline, and the jersey walls will be removed. It’s unclear exactly what will happen to next year, though people interviewed hope to see them back.
Catherine Hover, owner of Palette on Broadway and of Saratoga Paint and Sip on Henry Street, echoed what Maciel said: “It brings more attention to what our streets can be,” she said. “And if we can use glitter, why not?”
Steve Thurston
Benj Gleeksman shows off his paint-covered hands. He helped stencil jersey walls on Henry Street, September 2021.