Wednesday, August 17, 2005
The fanfare that greeted last year’s construction of a
mock-Tudor bus stop just off Bellevue Avenue may have quieted, but the warning
sound of alarm bells is now chiming instead.
With work well under way on the shelter’s twin counterpart to be situated just
yards away, fears exist that the new structure might suffer at the hands of
graffiti vandals in the same way that its predecessor has.
“It just seems to be a fun activity for some people, unfortunately,” said Eileen
Sheehan. “I can’t understand it.”
In her role as chair of the Civic Beautification Committee of the Garden Club of
Montclair, Sheehan was actively involved in the resurrection of the previously
dilapidated shelters, which cost just under $50,000 to revive. And as a result,
she is concerned about the new shelter’s plight.
“I’m really happy to have seen this through to the end,” she said. “I think the
two together will look just great. I just hope they stay the way we intended
them.”
The first shelter, replete with its exposed exterior faux beams and high
slanting roof, has seemingly become the blank canvas of choice for the town’s
amateur street artists since its completion in 2004. Its wooden interior
displays various misspelled carved epithets and doodles, remnants of stickers
advertising upcoming CD releases, and even the aborted efforts of a rendering of
the Star of David. In addition, the $25,000 bus stop has suffered significant
scribbling to its windows and to the stainless steel fuse box that is mounted on
the structure’s rear exterior wall.
Such extra adornments come as a disappointment to Sheehan.
“I think when you go into something like this, you hope that just how beautiful
it looks would be a deterrent,” she said. “But, I guess that was a high hope.”
But, apparently not one adopted in isolation. Prior to work being completed on
the original commuter shelter, which sits within the boundaries of the parking
lot opposite the Bellevue Theater, the architect of the sibling shelters, John
Way claimed, “It will be so much better looking than what’s there [that] it
would encourage people not to vandalize.”
No such luck.
“It’s terrible. Apparently that made it almost an invitation to graffiti,”
Sheehan said.
“The truth is that you can do the most beautiful building in the world, but
someone can still come along and graffiti it,” explained Way this week.
Further to the psychological protection afforded to the shelters, Way said he
recommended a series of physical measures designed to “graffiti-proof” them.
They included the application of a special coating to the wooden interior, the
use of a tough stain-resistant compound for the exterior stucco, and the
installation of Lexan MR-10 windows that are designed to be resistant to both
scratching and blows from baseball bats.
As of yet, the shelter’s windows are showing only the scars of a broad-tipped
permanent marker, something Way said should be easily removed. More work would
be required, however, to remove the graffiti from the wooden interior, which Way
said might have to be sanded off and refinished and which, as of Wednesday,
remained untouched.
As with the sibling shelter for incoming buses located across the public parking
lot — opposite the Bellevue Theater — the second shelter is also being
constructed by Kitchens by Turano.
The township’s newly appointed director of Public Works, Steve Wood, said this
week that his department is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the
bus shelters.
“It is our job to maintain them and keep them clean,” Wood said. “When residents
complain, we make our best effort to get out there and deal with things in a
timely manner.”
Wood speculated that during the summer months, one of his teams might have time
to attend to the shelters once a month, and if graffiti is spotted during the
course of that work, then an effort to remove it will be made.
However, he also said that he was unaware if any complaint had been received
about the shelters, although he admitted that he is “not generally notified
unless there is a particular crisis.”
Wood did note that during his brief tenure, he had not noticed graffiti to be a
widespread problem throughout the town. It is a view supported by Montclair
Deputy Police Chief Roger Terry.
“We have not been receiving many complaints about it in town, and lately it has
not had a severe impact,” Terry said this week. “Mainly it is restricted to the
uptown areas and the uptown stores.”
Despite its scarcity, Terry maintained that instances of graffiti are still
closely monitored.
Because many gangs have been known to mark their territory with graffiti tags,
Terry said that it is the department’s policy to photograph any cases that are
reported and to keep them on file to cross-reference them in the future. That
process, Terry said, had been employed with regard to the year-old bus shelter
although no positive results had been registered.
“At this particular time we have no match,” he said. “It is rare that one pops
up, but it certainly does happen.”
For now, when the new shelter is completed in the next several weeks, Sheehan,
for one, will be hoping that the architectural features remain the only match to
its scarred sibling shelter.