Answer: The newly repainted Contempo Plaza on First Street.
Hopefully they’ll be painting it all over again in the very near
future. … All joking aside, the Red Phone received calls about
Contempo’s colors, unsafe sidewalks and loitering laborers this
week:
Answer: The newly repainted Contempo Plaza on First Street. Hopefully they’ll be painting it all over again in the very near future. … All joking aside, the Red Phone received calls about Contempo’s colors, unsafe sidewalks and loitering laborers this week:
“The Contempo Plaza on First Street – their new paint job has been the topic of conversation I’ve had with people for the last week or two, and the question is: Is it an example of blight in our city?”
The plaza sure did take a beating from the ugly stick, didn’t it. Thank goodness we at the Red Phone haven’t been the only ones to notice the gawd-awful red, green and yellow monstrosity. If the goal was to make sure people notice the plaza as they drive by, we would say they succeeded. But that’s not really the attention you want to have, either.
According to employees at businesses in the strip mall, the owners painted it with the best intentions – they also recently repaved the lot. However, an anonymous petition is circulating in hopes of getting the plaza repainted.
“It’s tacky,” one worker said. “Nobody likes it.”
The Red Phone caller wonders if the new paint job will hurt business at the plaza.
“The colors they chose to paint that center are so terrible that people are worried about the businesses in that center and whether they are still going to get customers because it’s such a turnoff,” she said.
* * *
Another Dispatch reader contacted us to complain about the terrible condition of sidewalks in Gilroy.
“I think you know how bad streets and sidewalks are in this town. If not? Take a ride on Lewis Street by the Old Cannery, then on West Fifth Street and almost all sidewalks throughout this city,” the reader told us. “I know of four or five senior old ladies that have tripped and fallen. They are ready to sue the next time they fall. Let’s fix that, not Monterey Street.”
How about let’s fix that AND Monterey Street …
* * *
Finally, a caller phoned the Red Phone this week to complain about the city’s lack of enforcement of its loitering laws.
“I’m concerned about all of the so-called day workers that are standing around our public streets and in the parking lots of Home Depot,” he said. “What happened to our laws concerning loitering? What’s going to be done about this?”
What we shouldn’t be doing is fining day workers for going to Home Depot, a well-known place to congregate and look for work. What we should think about is doing what Morgan Hill has done: create a day worker shelter that provides an official place for day workers to go to wait for a job.
Have a question, a comment or a community
concern? Call the Red Phone. It listens. It answers. It writes with wit and true grit. If there’s a problem that needs fixing or an issue that needs airing, Red Phone will answer because it’s for sharing. Juicy tips it does take, leave a message – don’t wait. All we’ll need is a name and a phone number to take. But that won’t be published, the Red Phone won’t tell. It’ll just take your info,
before raising a little hell. The Red Phone rings off the hook each Wednesday and Friday.
