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The holidays ended weeks ago, but new Christmas light displays are still popping up on Portland’s trees.
It’s thanks to a new city program, with $300,000 in potential funding, to brighten up Portland’s streets—not for holiday spirit, but for safety.
“It didn’t matter if it wasn’t ready for the holidays,” says Jessie Burke, chair of the Old Town Community Association, which has yet to plug in its displays. “We literally just need light.”
The effort to wrap more of Portland’s trees in strings of holiday-inspired LED lighting has been in the works for months. It was announced by the city publicly in December as “Project Illumination” and billed as an expensed “winter light display” to more than 800 trees downtown.
But the city’s new lighting program is far more ambitious than initially advertised. It’s expanding far across the river—and being sold to business leaders citywide as a new, possibly permanent, safety feature.
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office sent WW a list of a dozen additional neighborhoods, from St. Johns to the Jade District, where the mayor’s new Public Environment Management Office plans to install lights, if it can secure funding (see map).
PEMO was created in May to consolidate city services focused on cleaning public spaces, and has largely focused on graffiti removal and trash cleanup. But that office has now asked for $300,000 to continue the lighting program through the new year, which it says will promote “streetscape revitalization, increase public safety, and provide retail support.”
So far, besides the familiar lights that are strung up every winter in the downtown core, new displays have popped up along six blocks in Old Town and on 18 trees in St. Johns and 71 trees near Northeast Sandy Boulevard.
The city has plans to wrap at least 100 trees in the Jade District along 82nd Avenue, and 15 more on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, according to administrators in those districts. Nearly a dozen more neighborhoods are on the waitlist.
Here’s how the program works: The city pays to wrap the trees in lights, and nearby business owners pay for the electricity to power them. (In some cases, the $2.50-a-month electricity bill is subsidized by grants.)
For the past few months, PEMO employees have walked neighborhoods to identify promising trees. Then, administrators with local business districts have reached out to nearby property owners to see if they’re willing to provide access to an outlet.
In most cases, the lights are strung together over the tops of trees and then connected to the roofs of nearby buildings. There, Burke says, HVAC units allow an easy connection to the grid.
So far, says Alisa Kajikawa, who manages the Jade District for the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, it hasn’t been hard to persuade businesses to sign up. “The main concern has been the extra power use. But they’re all LED lights,” she says.
On a recent Sunday evening, Southwest 3rd Avenue in downtown was largely deserted despite being a little brighter thanks to illuminated trees. But Michael Dennis, 22, was out, working on his bike while sitting between a pair of large tents covering the sidewalk.
He’d been out on the streets “too long,” he said, and appreciated the gesture. “Makes the city feel lively,” he added, “and not so dead.”
INSTALLED
1. City Hall and Portland Building
2. Old Town
3. 71 street trees on NE Sandy
4. 18 street trees at St. Johns Plaza
FUNDED, GETTING INSTALLED
5. 35 street trees in Montavilla along SE Stark and Glisan
6. 142 trees in the Jade District (SE 82nd and Division)
7. 103 trees on NE Fremont in Beaumont
8. Lents Commons
STILL NEED FUNDING
9. NE Broadway
10. Lloyd District
11. Central Eastside District
12. SE Hawthorne
13. St. Johns on N Lombard
14. SE Foster-Powell
15. N Williams/Dawson Park
Source: Mayor’s Office