Restaurants, boutiques and art galleries along Roosevelt Row will brighten up thanks to a project adding more than 30 new street lights from Central Avenue to Fourth Street next year, a change business owners say they have been waiting on for a long time.
The Roosevelt Row Pedestrian Project began planning about eight years ago and was broken down into two phases, with an overall budget of $750,000, according to the Street Transportation Department.
The first phase will install double-sided roadway lighting and pedestrian lighting from Central Avenue to Fourth Street in April 2014, department civil engineer Briiana Velez said. The second phase, currently in the design phase, anticipates about the same number of new lights from Fourth Street to Seventh Street in April 2015, she said.
Greg Esser, Roosevelt Row Community Development Corporation board vice president, said it is important that pedestrians walking in the Roosevelt District receive better lighting so that they feel safer.
The addition of street lighting would make the street more welcoming and inviting for people to shop, said Joshua Hahn, co-owner of GROWop clothing store on Sixth Street. The lack of lighting has kept people from walking toward his street or even noticing the building, Hahn said.
“That’s why we’ve gone ahead and hung our own lighting, just to brighten up our corner,” Hahn said. “It would be nice to have the whole street lit up the same way.”
Erin Carroll, co-owner of Songbird Coffee and Tea House, located on Roosevelt Street, said her major concern with the current lighting situation has been for her employees who walk to their cars or homes after the business’s 10 p.m. closing time. Taking out the trash is also bothersome because the alleyway is dark, she added.
Songbird also has a bus stop in front of the building, which Carroll thinks would bring more customers in if not for poor lighting, she said.
“It’s not a friendly place,” Carroll said.
The city of Phoenix is trying to make Roosevelt Row as pedestrian-friendly as possible with the help of the new lighting to draw people in, Velez said.
The department estimates seven new roadway lights and 28 new pedestrian lights will be put in next year. Street lights costs approximately $4,000 and will shine over the pavement, while pedestrian lights cost about $2,500 and will light up the sidewalk, Velez said.
The city currently maintains about 90,000 street lights total with an overall budget of around $11 million for maintenance and energy costs alone, she said.
In the last year, the standard for street lighting changed to LED lights in order to save the city money on energy costs, Velez said. As a result, any new project, including the Roosevelt Row Pedestrian Project, will now include all LED street lighting.
“With the LEDs, it’s … going to be a wider light to be able to see things a lot clearer,” Velez said. “Right now, it is more of an amber yellow light.”
The Evans Churchill Community Association is working with the city to ensure that the new improvements stemming from this project allow for more “district identity,” Esser said. Right now, the community lacks cohesion because there are different lights on both sides of each street, he said.
“There hasn’t been an overriding vision or guideline to how the area evolves,” Esser said. “We are working proactively with the city to establish those design standards.”
Contact the reporter Stacia.Affelt@asu.edu
