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The Lakewood Times

What's The Big Deal? Part One by Hershel Herskowitz

7/29/2013

3 Comments

 
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ALIENATING LAKEWOOD EVEN MORE

This past Thursday the Lakewood Township Committee approved ten digital signs to be placed on main roads in our town. We will discuss at length the Backdoor dealings, exclusion of competition, and other serious matters in upcoming articles. For now I would like to focus on the intrinsic issue of the impropriety of the signs themselves.

Throughout our part of the state sign approvals are generally rationed. Everybody agrees that there should be a limit to how many billboards should be in a town.
Too many signs can make a nice tranquil town look like a circus of information, each sign begging for your attention, distracting, unnerving, and desperate. Digital signs are especially frowned upon since they bring the distraction to a whole new level, a constant changing stream of information blaring at a captive audience of drivers.

Which brings us to Lakewood. We are a town that always has dinners, campaigns for charities, events, carnivals, and sales that need to be promoted. Most of these events are foreign in nature to people outside of the Jewish Community. We have sufficient publications and mailings to inform most people in our town about any event. For goodness sake who doesn't know where Fiveish is? Who misses the BMG tent event because they didn't know about it?
Now imagine you are not from Lakewood, and you are not familiar with our community. Whenever you pass through Lakewood you will now see a 40 foot high bright sign that announces something about a Biker tcholim dinner. Or a once a year shaitel sale or kaporos, sukkah event, etc. etc. Will you ever consider stopping to shop at one of the many excellent stores we have in Lakewood? Or will you just go on thinking that Lakewood is a town that you should pass through as fast as possible?

We need to help businesses thrive in our town in order to survive. We need to attract businesses that will attract money from outside our community. We need to promote Lakewood as a town that is dignified and welcoming.

These ten signs will do the exact opposite. With their garish look that is not permitted anywhere else in the area, and the inevitable foreign announcements, it will be one more nail in the coffin to assure that Lakewood will never become a city we can be proud of.

Coming up Part 2 the dangers of driver distraction.
3 Comments
down town bussiness owner
7/29/2013 12:55:15 pm

Can u please work on the down town parking. We have 2 hrs parking but no one is giving out tickets so what good is it. Please help us we are losing our customers thanks

Reply
Mr Jiggs
7/29/2013 02:11:37 pm

It would help to do 2 things.
1) enforce parking regulations with tickets.
2) install parking meters. In most towns the downtown has meters. Some charge .25 for 30 minutes, others charge .10 per 10 minutes....

That would keep cars moving faster and not just sit for 2 hours.

Reply
Lakewood is a parking disaster
8/22/2013 05:49:50 am

It is not downtown, it is anywhere in Lakewood - Parking anywhere in Lakewood is an absolute disaster-It's time to build a seven story Parking Garage in Lakewood, not these little piddly parking lots that let 11 people park if they have little sports cars, not the typical odyssey or sienna.

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