February 2016 - Texas Main Street Managers ListServ Thread
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Question from Seguin: “I am wanting to know what other communities leave their lights on year round and how they celebrate the holiday season if their lights are on year round. “
Every year we kick off our holiday season with our tree lighting ceremony where we light all the trees in our Central Park and we have lights on all the buildings surrounding the square. Our Mayor and Council have asked about leaving the lights on year round in the trees and/or the buildings.
Kyle Kramm
Georgetown
Georgetown wants to keep the holidays special, so we don’t keep our tree lights on year round, plus our Urban Forester says it’s really unhealthy for the trees. Not to mention the ongoing maintenance with squirrels, bored humans, etc. But we have kept our building outline lights on year round, but again the ongoing maintenance has been a challenge especially through the hot summer months when brackets crack and break, so we’ve decided to turn them off when the time changes, and then turn them back on in the fall.
We would prefer them to look great with not too many out or hanging down than to have to maintain them year round and some of them look really rough at times.
Shelly Hargrove
Winnsboro
Winnsboro’s downtown merchants had voted to leave the building outline-lighting year-round, and funded the installation and continued maintenance. When I came on board, we entered into the final year agreement for maintenance. At our next board meeting, the current lighting company will present options & pricing, moving forward, for possible scenarios. As Shelly mentioned, the Texas summer heat can take its toll on the hardware, and I’m quite sure that that maintenance option will be quite pricey.
My question: Who’s paying for the continued maintenance of the building outline-lighting? Building owners? Fundraisers? EDC? Any information would be helpful for our discussion. Thanks, Shelly, for expressing the downside to year-round lighting. Our current maintenance company has expressed the same concerns, and I know their quote is going to be high for that option.
Gus Gustafson
Denton
Our tree lights are white and remain on year-round. We also have outline lights on the roofs of the buildings facing the CHOS. The lights add to the ambiance and safety. Our Christmas tree is a live tree that we decorate for Holiday Lighting. It is covered with over 2000 multicolored lights. The tree lights are turned on during the Holiday Lighting Festival and go off on January 2nd. We also have wreaths and banners that go up around the Square (and the major thoroughfares in town) that are installed in late November and come down in early January. We have contracts with each building owner or merchant (whoever pays the electric bill) that provides a means to maintain the lights. We don’t get 100% participation on this, so I built in a bit of a cushion, to make sure we have enough money to cover the maintenance.
DOWNTOWN DENTON BUILDING LIGHT AGREEMENTS INFORMATION SHEET
Julie Glover, CMSM
Childress
We are just implanting lighting of the buildings in downtown year round. We plan to allow businesses to change their lights to color for Christmas season if they choose. At our office they will be clear lights during the year and multi colored during the season to match our tree in the office window.
Susan Leary
Canton
In Canton we leave our lights on all year long around the tops of our buildings. The Friday before Thanksgiving we light up the Christmas tree.
Tam Erwin
Decatur
In Decatur we have lights on stringers that radiate from the top of the courthouse to eight points on the surrounding buildings.
The lights used to only be up during the holiday season, but are now up all year long as part of our Destination Decatur campaign. Since the Wise County Courthouse is on the highest hill around, they are very visable from all directions coming into Decatur and help people find downtown.
The lights bulbs are clear (white) from January to November and are then changed to red for the holidays November through December.