UPDATE: It has begun. Riverfront Park is no longer Riverfront Park. It’s Jennings Landing (see more pix here). Given its location on the Corning Preserve, two Albany mayors are now being memorialized on the banks of the Hudson. Commenter Laurie Brisley, below, came close to predicting this when she first suggested the walkway leading to the park.
Thomas Whalen has a statue. William S. Hackett gets a middle school. John Swinburne: a skating rink.
Erastus Corning, mayor for 41 years, had a building named after him, a soaring hunk of concrete on the Plaza. John Boyd Thacher got a whole state park.
You can hardly poke your foot outdoors around here without tripping on a memorial to some Albany mayor of yore. So we have to ask: What about Jerry Jennings, who just announced he won’t be running for reelection? After 20 years in office, the outgoing, perpetually tanned politico ranks as the city’s second-longest-running mayor. He already has a street in North Albany bearing his name, Jennings Drive. But why stop there? Surely he deserves some significant cultural marker noting his tenure: a statue, an edifice, a bobblehead (oh, wait. . . . ).
What do you think? How should we memorialize Mayor Jerry’s five terms?