Open space on Galleria parking garage roof could be a park.

With a little imagination, not even a lot. Photo below taken Saturday Feb. 17, 2018 at 2:30 PM. In other words in the middle of the afternoon on a cold overcast winter day: perfect for shopping. And even then the garage roof of the Galleria indoor mall has no cars, ZERO. Could that space be put to good use?

Yes! As a park! Come on, it's a great idea.

Open space on roofs of apartment buildings and municipal garages. Saturday, January 30, 2016 With just a little imagination we can substantially expand the amount of open space in urban downtown White Plains...

The City of White Plains should require all new residential apartment buildings to have green and recreational roofs.  Any existing regulations that might inhibit such addition of this to existing buildings should be reviewed and reconsidered...

The Trump residential apartment condominium at the City Center has on its roof space atop the public parking garage: tennis and basketball courts and what appears to be a small golf hole.  Use Google Earth to check for yourself...

The City has many municipal parking garages scattered around town to serve the many multiple lane roads that slash through downtown.  Obviously each garage has an open top level, which could be made into a green roof at the very least or more imaginatively into a public open space, some with recreational elements.
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Building department bureaucracy reply to roof use. Thursday, February 25, 2016

"A roof is not space(d) that is to be accessed by anyone except for landlord representatives or service personnel." ...

How about reviewing that policy? I've sent the following link to CC members:

http://white-plains-ny.blogspot.com/2016/01/open-space-on-roofs-of-apartment.html

I suggest you read it and look at the photo. Making use of at least some roofs makes a lot of sense. How long have they been off limits? It sounds like a bureaucracy dictated policy. Call if you'd like to discuss.
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This post of 2/17/18 will also be sent to Common Council members.

ShopRite: food dates not the most recent.

Message just sent about:

ShopRite of White Plains
13 City Place
White Plains, New York 10601

(914) 539 - 4500

through the ShopRite online form at http://www.shoprite.com/contact-us-form-email/

Needs adult supervision. Lots of checkout stations but never even half with an employee, half of whom are always standing around.

Persistent problem: food dates not the most recent. No, it's not simply that product has not been rotated. It's an obvious corporate policy to buy food with a borderline date, probably because it's less expensive. Since food companies are increasingly dating their stuff WAY in advance, the problem is not always obvious. Most recent example:

Last night I bought nasoya ORGANIC extra firm tofu with a "use by" March 30 date. I had bought the exact same a couple of days before and was pretty sure it had an April date. So I checked many other packages in ShopRite and all had March 30, so I figured that I was mistaken. Nope. April 3 at home. You had put out OLDER stuff, lot's of it.
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This is NOT an isolated case. For many months I've noticed this with other foods, including milk and breakfast cereal. How do you like buying milk and when you get home it's older than what you had already bought there? Yes, the same brand and type.

So, check the dates and use your common sense. Write to corporate entities about specific examples. The super high rent shell games in White Plains are bad enough but that type of stuff shouldn't be tolerated in supermarkets, especially the one that is downtown and most accessible to people without cars ... and more choices.

Galleria parking garage sidewalk not cleared of snow.

And it's right across the street from the Public Safety building. Some workers in that building park in the Galleria parking garage and then jaywalk across Martine Avenue into their office. They must see that snow was ignored on the Galleria parking garage sidewalk well after the snow had been cleared from the sidewalks of the municipal buildings along Martine across the street. And the Public Safety building has windows.

Photos taken at 11:40 AM, Wednesday, February 7, 2018:

Notice in the second photo that the snow was cleared half way down the block on South Lexington but snow was left on the sidewalk adjacent to the Galleria parking garage. It couldn't be more obvious that whatever entity is responsible for snow removal of the Galleria parking garage sidewalk is negligent. But enforcement people directly across the street are oblivious.

You would think that whoever cleared the snow from the Galleria retail sidewalk along Main Street might be responsible enough to continue and do it along Martine Avenue. But no common sense there either.

Saturday, December 16, 2017

Snow removal: does the city ever enforce sidewalk clearing without complaints?

Apparently not. White Plains is a one horse town. Always was. Always will be.

Camp fair: another event NOT downtown.

You can't make up stuff like this. Saturday January 3 there's this event about summer camp for kids. You'd think it would be held downtown so that it would be accessible to the most people, including those without cars. Instead, it's at the campus like high school. Maybe that's to have outdoor activities, except that it's the dead of winter.

So why is it at the high school? Probably for the same reason that the Council of Neighborhood Associations (CNA) holds its meetings far from downtown: those who run the city do not live downtown. Downtown to them is a place for their amusement and convenience, a place to which they will only go by car. This accounts for the dozen or so pseudo interstate highway roads that slash through downtown.