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Chevron Glare |
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Copyright © 2001 by Dave Badtke |
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The folks who live near the refurbished Chevron gas station in Benicia on West Military, across from the firehouse, must have thought the earth stopped dead in its rotation at high noon on Saturday the 13th when the station reopened, its lights blazing in the evening. Driving past it that night and every night since, I find the lights so intense that they become a distraction, like highway construction lights drawing my attention even though they’re so bright they hurt my eyes. While our house on West K, which is a diagonal block from the station, is shaded from the Chevron sun by our neighbor’s beautifully tall redwood trees, I can imagine that the poor people living close to the station, up the hill, across the park, and along West 2nd Street near Military, must feel as though they have floodlights trained on their homes. I called John Bunch, Planning Department Director, and asked him about the lights. He said that the City was aware of the problem and was working with the architect to come up with a more reasonable lighting plan, which he expected to get back from the architect this week. He said that the Chevron station, which was to have lighting consistent with the proposed Safeway lighting, was too bright, and he assured me that the lighting would need to be modified before the plan would be approved by the City. Since Safeway is also being renovated, this gave me pause. I asked John if that meant the lighting would be consistent with the current lighting in the Safeway parking lot, but he said that the Safeway parking lot light level is rather low and might pose a safety hazard. Since I’m sure no one in Benicia wants a Las Vegas-like strip on West Military, I’ll give Chevron and the City the benefit of the doubt and assume a mistake was made by the architect and those reviewing the lighting plan. As anyone knows who has built or remodeled anything, such mistakes happen. Having seen how bad lighting can be, however, it is now critical that we carefully monitor both the proposed Chevron remedy as well as the lighting design of the remodeled Safeway. Perhaps we can even be so bold as to make a few recommendations. Turning to architect Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language, I found the following in pattern number 252, “Pools of Light”, the penultimate pattern, there being 253 in the book: “Uniform illumination—the sweetheart of the lighting engineers—serves no useful purpose whatsoever. In fact, it destroys the social nature of space, and makes people feel disoriented and unbounded.” He adds that “…the space we use as social space is in part defined by light. When the light is perfectly even, the social function of the space gets utterly destroyed: it even becomes difficult for people to form natural human groups…. Hopkinson and Longmore … showed that small bright light sources distract the attention less than large areas which are less bright.” Paris, the city of lights, has dimly lit streets which lead to corner groupings of cafés and shops which are lighted on the inside, drawing people in toward the light. Las Vegas, the city of light pollution, attempts to draw our attention with ever more and brighter lights which blind our vision much as loud, pounding rock music deafens our hearing. If you’re thinking that a gas station would have a hard time competing with Paris, I’d agree with you except that just a little imagination could make an immense difference. (Speaking of Paris, I briefly visited the Chevron shop and searched in vain for the gourmet coffee so frequently touted during the Council hearings on the renovation.) Consider, for example, how different this station would be if Chevron commissioned local artists to paint murals on the walls and building, an enhancement that would transform the establishment from just another gas station into a landmark worthy of regional recognition. I’d love to see what Cynthia Giroux, who painted a floor at Petals Restaurant, and Kristina Young, who is featured in Carquinez Review ONE, could do with Chevron’s cement block wall and featureless façade. Since relative changes in light intensity, provided the lowest intensity is above a safe threshold, are more important than absolute light intensity, much lower light levels should be used throughout the station: The space would be more attractive and electricity would be conserved. (Given increasing electric bills, the money saved would easily pay for the mural commission.) The lights in the parking area should be hooded to illuminate the pavement, not the sky, and lighting gradients should be created to add interest to the parking area. Similarly, the lighting above the pumps should be turned down and targeted at the pumping stations. The Chevron architect and the City would serve us well if, in solving the current problem, they observed Alexander’s concluding advice: “Place the lights low, and apart, to form individual pools of light…like bubbles to reinforce the social character of the spaces which they form. Remember that you can’t have pools of light without the darker places in between.” |
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- Dave Badtke can be contacted at: www.CarquinezReview.com; Dave@Badtke.com; PO Box 763, Benicia, CA 94510; or by calling 707-745-5540.
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