LED2 Lights Up Downtown KCK

This holiday season, you can head to downtown Kansas City, Kansas to "see the lights".

OK, so maybe they're not the Christmas lights we used to have, but the new LED streetlights that were recently installed on several blocks downtown are still pretty impressive.

LED2 ("LED squared") Lighting Group (Facebook) recently bought the building at 600 Minnesota (what some of us knew as the "Jupiter Building" growing up) and have set up shop there.

The new office for LED2 Lighting Group in downtown KCK.

I had a great conversation recently with Martin Zhang and Kevin Thomas of LED2 and they gave me some background on their company and on why they believe the switch to LED lighting makes sense.

Martin founded the company in 2011 after he learned LED technology through a college project where he created a large LED display. He was impressed with the potential applications of LED lighting and grew a company to manufacture and distribute LED arrays.

Martin said that his vision is to also create an assembly line facility in Kansas City, Kansas so that the company can both assemble and sell their products locally.

The company recently donated 94 LED fixtures for existing downtown light poles. The Unified Government paid to have them installed and we can all see for ourselves how LED lighting looks on city streets.

Here's one of the new LED lights
installed on an existing pole near 5th and Minnesota.

This map that shows where the new LED streetlamps
have been installed. Every red circle represents a new LED lamp.
You'll find them on Minnesota Ave. from 5th to 7th,
on 6th and 7th Streets from State Ave. to Barnett Ave.,
and on Ann Ave. and Barnett Ave. from 6th to 7th.
(Click the map to enlarge for better viewing.)

The company can sell completely new fixtures with LED technology or retrofit older existing fixtures by custom designing and manufacturing an LED array. They make products for a wide variety of interior and exterior applications. Besides streetlights, they have lighting arrays that work in settings from churches to offices to warehouses to restaurants and retail spaces.

Martin and Kevin stressed that they want to work with their customers and educate them on lighting and energy saving. They said that they know they have a quality product, but they don't want to just sell it and then walk away.

This picture and the one below show the familiar
"upside down dome" shape of our current streetlights.

Most (if not all) of the streetlights in Wyandotte County are are currently outfitted with "high pressure sodium" (HPS) type lamps. Across the country, city after city is replacing their old HPS lamps with new light emitting diode (LED) type lamps.

Here's a picture of the new LED lamp with an array
of light emitting diodes.

Martin and Kevin told me that the cost is similar to purchase and install the two different types of lamps. However, there are some differences that could tip the scale in favor of LED across the city.

LED lamps are estimated to last three times longer than HPS. Some sources suggest a 15-17 year lifespan for LEDs assuming the light is on for 10-12 hours per day. This compares to a 5-6 year life for a HPS lamp with an even shorter lifespan for the "ballast" that provides the proper electricity to energize the HPS fixture.

In addition to longer life, the cost of operating LED lamps can be 40-50% less than the cost of operating HPS.

The city of Los Angeles began a project in 2009 to convert all 210,000 streetlights in the city to LED and have documented a 63% savings so far in cost of operation (see "Los Angeles Saves Millions With LED Street Light Deployment").

One of the most noticeable differences between the old HPS and the new LED is that the light from the LED arrays tends to be a little more "blue - white" compared to the more amber color of many of the older HPS lights. Here's a before and after photo from the city of Santa Rosa, California comparing HPS with LED.

http://srcity.org/departments/publicworks/streetlight/Pages/default.aspx

The light from LED arrays can be aimed a little more than HPS lights, so LEDs tend to shine more "down" and less "out". This tends to reduce what some people see as glare from HPS streetlights and it tends to cut down on "light pollution" (light that is scattered around and above the street lamps themselves).

Although there is still debate about cause and effect, some authors have written about a correlation between better street lighting and a reduction in crime (see, for example, "The Crime Reducing Effect of Improved Street Lighting: The Dudley Project").

So... walk or drive downtown some evening and let me know what you think of the new lights.

Have a great week!
~ Brian

Email: bmckiernan@wycokck.org

Like my page on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1IFI5qv 

Follow me on Twitter: @bmckiernan_ug2

Parks Ready to Bloom

I'm tired of winter. Gray skies. Brown plants. Forecast high temperatures in the 40's. Actual high temperatures in the 20's. Bah.

There... just looking at those colorful flowers makes me feel better.  :-)

I'm ready for the "green up" of spring and, in an urban area like District 2, the biggest green up happens in our parks.

According to a parcel map from UG staff, District 2 is home to 16 named parks:

• St. John's Park
• Huron Park
• 8th Street Park
• Woods Park
• Northrup Park
• Waterway Park
• Flatiron Park
• Splitlog Park
• Holy Family Park
• Simpson-Central Park
• St. Margaret's Park
• Lally Park
• Bethany Park
• Prescott Park
• Shawnee Park
• Bill Clem Park

Like most other cities in America, we are challenged to find the money and other resources necessary to simply maintain our existing parks, let alone enhance and expand them or consider creating new ones.

Local parks guru Steve Curtis sent me a couple of very, very interesting links that give us an insight into the history of one of our District 2 parks: Waterway Park (11th Street and Grandview Boulevard).

Here's a paragraph from a web page entitled "A Brief History of Kansas City, Kansas Municipal Government". This particular paragraph was written about events in KCK around 1910.

"As it developed, the parks system eventually included six public swimming pools, together with bath house/recreation buildings in Shawnee Park and Clifton Park. (The Clifton Park pool had a natural sand beach.) The most elaborate development within the new park system was Waterway Park, which stretched along an old watercourse from Washington Boulevard on the north to Grandview Boulevard on the south, and included as its centerpiece a sunken water garden in the block between State and Minnesota Avenues."

If you've never read the "brief history" web page, definitely click this link:
http://web.archive.org/web/19970210052718/www.kckcc.cc.ks.us/kck/kckhist.htm

The document traces the history of Kansas City, Kansas from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. It was published online as part of a collection of materials related to the consolidation of Kansas City, Kansas and Wyandotte County in 1997. This historical narrative was assembled from materials previously prepared by: Ralph W. Armstrong Jr., William L. Lebovich, Camille Ellett, Jerome Paul Laysaught, Larry K. Hancks, Joseph H. McDowell, Grant W. Harrington, Mary Flanagan Rupert, Margaret Landis, and Edwin Dale Shutt II.

It's a completely fascinating read that we'll definitely visit again. But now, back to parks.

Here's a planting map for the Waterway Park complex as prepared by the Landscape Architectural firm of Hare and Hare sometime around 1910.

Definitely click on this image to enlarge it
so that you can see the incredible detail.
Alternately, here's a link that points
to the original document online:
http://bit.ly/1vpRPzP

I grew up in this neighborhood in the 60s and 70s and I never remember a "sunken water garden" between Minnesota and State nor a lake in what is now Waterway Park. All I remember is a hole in the ground with the crumbling remains of a park that looked it had once been pretty neat.

Here's a Google map screen shot that I roughly cropped
to match the site plan pictured above.
Only Big Eleven Lake remains of the "waterway"
features of the original park.

Over the past several years, the Unified Government and community partners like Community Housing of Wyandotte County have worked magic in reinventing Waterway Park and enhancing its value in the community.

But what happened? Why did this urban oasis disappear in the mid to late 1900s and need to be recreated?

Like all other city infrastructure, parks can be more expensive to maintain than to build. 

I'm guessing that, as the city grew and as people moved from the urban core to new suburban neighborhoods, local government simply did not have the resources to maintain urban parks to anywhere near their former glory.

We still face that same challenge today.

A report titled, "Revitalizing Inner City Parks: New Funding Options Can Address the Needs of Underserved Urban Communities" states, "While interest in city parks is reviving and governments and civic groups around the country are revitalizing run-down city parks, the current economic downturn in states and cities and severe budget restraints are still a major threat to the health of existing parks, and the creation of new parks." (National Recreation and Park Association http://www.nrpa.org/uploadedFiles/nrpaorg/Grants_and_Partners/Recreation_and_Health/Resources/Issue_Briefs/Urban-Parks.pdf)

I had the pleasure of meeting the UG's new Director of Parks and Recreation last week. Jeremy Rogers comes to Wyandotte County from Independence, Missouri where he served for many years as Assistant Director of Parks and Recreation.

He is still in the process of learning about our parks and visiting them to gauge their strengths and weaknesses, but he said that he already has some ideas on positive steps we can take toward improvement.

Ultimately, though, it's going to take resources. You and I will need to work together on that.

If you haven't already, send me an email or head over to my Commissioner page on Facebook and give me your perspective on the following questions:

• What parks do you visit?
• In the grand scheme of things, is maintaining and improving our parks a high, medium or low priority for you?
• What could we (UG and community) do to enhance your use and enjoyment of the parks you visit?

Finally, who knows where Woods Park is in District 2?  :-)


Have a great week!
~ Brian

Email: bmckiernan@wycokck.org

Click here to receive an email notice of new blog posts

Like my page on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter