Just What Is "The West 10th Street Project," Hmm?

Take a casual stroll around sections of the West Village during the daytime, and you may not notice it. You may not even notice it at night, unless you pause a moment and look up. If you do look up, however, you might notice?at least in certain areas (around 6th Ave. & 10th St., for instance)?that new streetlights are appearing up and down the city's sidewalks. Not just your regular old new streetlights, but fancy new retro streetlights. The austere, fliered, silver poles we've been ignoring for years are being replaced with ornate, black, Romanesque pillars. At the top, instead of the sleek, War of the Worlds-style death rays arching out over the street, you find more intricate metalwork, the bulbs drooping over the street in a manner reminiscent of 19th-century gaslamps. The lights themselves are no longer the amber-tinted sodium vapor lamps we've come to know and love, but rather those old-style white-shading-into-purple variety?the kind that leave circular pools of light on the sidewalk beneath them, making New York's darkened streets look like something out of a Jimmy Durante sketch.

When they were first pointed out to me, I figured it was a limited operation?maybe something that was being done as set decoration for yet another period film that was being shot in the neighborhood. (Remember when Spike Lee changed all the street signs for Summer of Sam?) But before long, it became apparent that it was happening in a number of places. Once you hit 5th Ave. and head into the West Village, there they are.

Along with the new electronic parking meters and those invisible, unused, knee-cracking, potentially deadly parabolic bike racks, they're subtly giving the city a whole new postmodern-nostalgic look and feel.

The fact that these new streetlamps were wrapped in Christmas lights also led me to think for a moment that they were just another addition to the city's annual holiday street decorations?but it seems like an awful lot of expense to go to simply in order to have something nice from which to dangle some twinkly lights.

The real question is, with everything that's been going on in Manhattan these past few months, with everything that still needs to be done, and with the much-touted citywide fiscal crunch, why is the city spending the time and the effort and the money to replace what had been, by all appearances, perfectly good, functional streetlights? I mean, the new ones are nice and all?a damn sight nicer than the old ones?but still?it seemed odd. A bit of an extravagance in these lean times. So I called the Dept. of Transportation to find out what the deal was, just out of curiosity.

Three telephone conversations later, a very nice woman informed me that what I was seeing was part of something called "The West 10th Street Project," and though DOT is putting up the streetlights, the whole shebang was being overseen by the Dept. of Design and Construction (DDC). So I gave a call over there, where I was asked to leave another message.

As I waited for a call back, I thought about what the woman at the DOT had told me?namely, that the Project "just went on for three or four blocks" along, she assumed, W. 10th. But I knew that wasn't the case. It was happening on W. 9th and 8th as well. And down 6th Ave. At least.

The DDC official I eventually spoke with informed me that I needed to talk to a man named John Spavins, who was more directly involved with the project. So I called Mr. Spavins and left yet another message.

As I waited again, I scoured their website , in vain, hoping to find any mention at all of this increasingly mysterious "West 10th Street Project." There was nothing to be found. I began to think that I was going to an awful lot of trouble to uncover what should have been some very simple, unscary answers regarding some new goddamned streetlights.

"I'm trying to determine what the West 10th St. Project is," Mr. Spavins told me when I spoke to him the next day. He was a good-humored man, and seemed genuinely perplexed. "I've been talking to my infrastructure people, but I haven't figured out what it is yet."

I explained where all this was going on, and outlined the details of the project as I knew them.

"There are two possibilities," he told me. "One is that it goes by another name, and it is here at DDC. Or it's not a DDC project. There are certain street amenities that get handled by Economic Development Corp., and there are certain limited street amenities that are handled directly by DOT?but the lady at DOT should've known that."

I agreed with him, and we hung up after he promised to get back to me once he knew something more.

Perhaps there's more to this story than I originally imagined. Why was everybody passing the buck? And why did those people who did tell me anything insist on attempting to fill my head with ugly lies? This was supposed to be a simple, inoffensive throwaway story. What in the hell is going on here? What are they hiding? And just what in the hell is happening over along W. 10th?

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