New glass installed at Huntington Convention Center to help prevent bird strikes

The newly renovated and expanded Huntington Convention Center opens later this month, with a grand opening date set for July 26.

The project manager, Jeff Appelbaum with Project Management Consultants, said they're on time and budget, and the expanded space and amenities are already bringing more events to town.

However, it's more than just people flocking to the convention center.

News 5 is following through on a story we've been reporting on for years about efforts to help prevent bird strikes in Downtown Cleveland.

A new expansive bank of windows is located on the main level of the newly renovated Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland. It is on the west side of the building along Ontario Street between Lakeside and St. Clair avenues and stretches up to the brand-new second-floor rooftop terrace.

It offers visitors stunning and iconic views, but what you don't see will also make an impression.

"The glass is a special kind of glass," said Appelbaum. "It's referred to as bird glass."

It will make a big difference for millions of migratory birds that travel through our city on their way to and from their breeding grounds.

"It is glass that is impregnated with UV material that the human eye can't see, but birds do see," he explained. "They see it as lines. So, birds don't fly into it. It looks like a cage to them, and so, they avoid a collision with the glass."

That is important because, as we have reported, we've lost an estimated three billion birds since the 1970s.

"There are various reasons for that, but any little bit we can do to help," Jake Kudrna, Cleveland Metroparks naturalist and Lights Out Cleveland volunteer coordinator, previously told us.

We've also featured how Lights Out Cleveland volunteers collect fallen birds that have collided with downtown windows during the busy spring and fall migration periods, mainly involving the first couple floors of a building and occurring upon takeoff and landing.

We've shown how the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center gets about 3,000 birds a year from Downtown Cleveland. The wildlife rehabilitation specialist there told Katie about a third of them are still alive when they arrive at the center, and roughly 90% are successfully treated and released back into nature.

The bird glass helps the birds see the glass as a barrier instead of a continuation of their habitat.

The cool thing is you can't notice anything when you look straight at the bird glass. It looks normal. But when you look at an angle, you can see slight wavy lines, which is the bird glass at work.

Another option for glass surfaces we've shown you is patterns or a film that can be affixed to a surface. It is less expensive and generally used on existing structures rather than new buildings.

"It was important to us," said Appelbaum. "It was also, frankly, important to the city."

In fact, he said the bird glass was a condition of their permit.

"Not that we wouldn't have done it anyway, but we would not have even had a permit from the city to do this if we had not put in this glass or done something to deal with this issue."

The bird glass cost an additional $411,000. The price tag for the entire renovation project for the convention center was about $49 million.

It is not just an ethical move but a business one too for our area.

Every year, bird watchers from around the world visit our region, spending time and money to see the masses of migratory birds move through, and it's not a good look if we aren't taking care of our natural wonders.

It is not just happening here in Cleveland. Appelbaum says other cities are taking similar action, as well.

Other locations in Downtown Cleveland are taking action, too. This includes Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, which is gearing up to install a special deterrent film for the North atrium glass with the hope of having it done by the upcoming fall migration period.

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