Please be aware that there is a snow emergency going into effect sometime today (late today?) until Friday.  Unfortunately, I’m not good at registering details from automated phone calls received before 5:00am and I haven’t been able to find any online announcements as of yet.  In any case, I’m pretty sure they said the 8th through the 10th and we are supposed to be getting up to a foot of snow tomorrow, so please think twice before leaving your car in the surface lot tonight.

A resident is looking for recommendations for a carpenter to install built-in book shelves.  Please feel free to share any suggestions in the comments.

We had Leo Forcier at Prime Properties of N. Chelmsford do the built-in bookcases in our loft and along the upstairs hallway.  We were quite satisfied with his work on the bookcases but that was several years ago and I don’t know who he’s using for a crew these days.  Our bookcases are plywood with nice trim pieces covering the edges; very practical but not particularly showy.  There are some photos in this old post.

If anyone’s noticed the freight elevator having issues, here’s the word from the management:

The last week or so the freight elevator had several different problems. 1) the electric circuit breaker was replaced, 2) the door contacts on the first floor were replaced, 3) the microprocessor had to be re-programmed because it lost its memory – for the first time ever. Everything seems to be well again.

For those of you who have at one time had a cordless doorbell button stuck up next to your unit door, you might want to take down any leftover, unused bracket before the painters get to your floor.  They will be compelled to paint around it and leave the unsightly artifact sitting there forevermore.  I just removed ours (which had already been painted around) and e-mailed Cathy asking her to ask the painters to touch up our doorframe. I also asked if she could have them keep an eye out for this sort of little white spot in case anyone else removes a bracket post-painting.

For those of you who use Twitter, I’d also like to call your attention to some useful info offered in the comments regarding keeping abreast of parking news:   “Folks who use Twitter on their phones may find it helpful to follow @LowellParkingMA and turn on mobile notifications. They (and the police department @LowellPD ) tweeted about the ban yesterday.
The parking department account tweets less often and only about parking, so might cause less spam. They do also post when garages are closed, around the folk festival, etc.”   Thanks, Angela!

The parking ban officially ended at 8:00 this morning.  Just a heads up if you need to move your car out of one of the city garages before 10:00am when the grace period ends; after that the city will start charging you.

If your car is parked in the surface lot, it needs to be moved by this afternoon to avoid risk of towing, as per the condo association’s snow parking policy.  Here’s the city parking info as it appears on the Lowell Police Facebook page:

A Snow Emergency Parking Ban has been declared effective Saturday, January 7, 2017 at 7:00 A.M. The ban shall be effective six hours later at 1:00 PM. on Saturday, January 7, 2017.

There shall be no parking on all City Streets from 1:00 PM. until such time that the ban is lifted. Motor vehicles parking in violation of such ban (City Ordinance, § 266-103: Parking prohibited) are subject to towing under the authority of the Lowell Police Department and such towing will be at the owner’s expense (§ 266-104: Removal authorized; charges). Motor Vehicles shall also receive a parking violation ticket.

For those who haven’t seen the notices on the first floor bulletin boards, work will be starting Tuesday to replace the common area carpeting on floors two through five. The work will begin on the second floor and take about a week per floor, during which time residents are responsible for removing any personal items such as door mats from the hallway. Residents of each level should receive notification prior to the start of work on their floor.

An added bit of history about our complex has been uploaded to the website in the form of a short map animation, complete with a little background music.  For anyone who’s interested, there’s a link on the History page, or it can be found here.

Happy New Year!  Wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and peaceful 2017.

Lowell has officially declared a snow emergency effective as of noon today.  This means no parking in the surface lot or your car risks being towed (condo snow parking policy here).

Here’s the police announcement.

It appears that the Roy Garage is NOT among the garages available for free to residents during the on-street parking ban, so be prepared to pay a few bucks or walk from one of the other garages.

I got an e-mail this morning asking if it was possible to be informed electronically about parking bans, which is a very reasonable question.  Here’s what I know:

You can sign up for the City of Lowell’s Civic Alert System which one would expect to notify you.  Unfortunately, this time, it didn’t (I’m not the only one who noticed the omission).  In the past, I’ve gotten automated phone calls.  I’m not sure if they just overlooked activating it this time or something has changed.  It’s not a bad idea to sign up in any case.

You can follow the Lowell Police Department Official Page on Facebook.  I hadn’t been doing it before but I just clicked their “follow” button this morning so that their announcements will now appear in my FB feed.

If you DO hear about something that might be significant for us downtown residents, shoot me an e-mail so I can post it on this bulletin board.  That’s how I found out about the ban this time (thank you, Brian); unfortunately, I didn’t see his e-mail until very late.

Thank you all, and my apologies for not posting the ban until so late last night!

I haven’t gotten my regular recorded phone call from the police department on the subject, but the Lowell Sun says there’s going to be a city-wide, on-street parking ban starting tomorrow morning at 6:00.  This also means that cars need to be moved from the Canal Place surface lot for plowing as per the Snow Storm Parking policy.

I just checked the Police Department’s Facebook page; here’s the official announcement: