The unusual holiday lighting of Atlanta’s downtown will come to a close this week as the holiday items are removed and stored. Coming, however, will be new LED lighting for the lamp posts.
Some spots created by Atlanta’s downtown holiday lighting project are even a bit crowded.
Store fronts whose light pours out onto the Atalanta downtown are highly valued, such as this lighting by The Sweet Spot.
The frosted spheres on the pecan tree at the Atlanta depot are a friendly addition to the holiday lighting scene. Note the Christmas tree, pine cone, lamp, red star and ribbon displays. Corporation
The spectacular tree ornament or ring in downtown in Atlanta at Wood’s Plaza will be even more whimsical when twinkling lights are added for next year.
Atlanta’s new holiday lighting provided by the Atlanta City Development carefully chosen for coloring and location.
Packing away the downtown lights
Atlanta’s new downtown holiday lighting is being taken down this week. But more is coming that will provide a glow to the experience of a welcoming town.
Tens of thousands of lights (if counted individually) were installed recently for the holiday season, thanks to the Atlanta City Development Corporation (ACDC) and its project to promote Atlanta’s downtown.
“The ACDC wants to highlight the good feeling of being downtown after dark,” said Miranda Johnson, executive director of this organization which citizens voted and approved in 1995. The approval was for a one-half cent sales tax to support the ACDC’s work to improve the downtown area.
This year’s decorations were mapped, designed and installed by Santa Beacon’s Christmas Lighting owned by Brian Adcock
was
of Queen City.
He and his company employees labored weekends and nights to get the decorations up in time this year. More than 100 lamp posts and spots were identified to receive one of the decorative displays with themes and colors such as the green Christmas tree, blue pine cones and red star and ribbon.
The cost of the project — as funded in the ACDC’s annual budget which is approved by the Atlanta City Council — was in the $100,000 range. Now additional change is coming.
“All of the Christmas lighting fixtures such as the big ornaments, the street lamp fixtures, and the lighted spheres in the pecan tree at the depot will all come down and be stored until next holiday season,” Johnson said.
“Once everything is down from the Christmas decoration, we will do a street lamp retro-fitting project where we switch the current high pressure sodium light bulb to a more modern LED style bulb. We plan to do that within the first quarter of 2026, and this change will be permanent.”
Johnson said the ACDC members were pleased with all the new items. Now there will be improvements.
“We are going to replace the large walkthrough ring ornament at Wood’s Plaza with a newly made one. It will be basically the same, but we did have some manufacturing errors. The manufacturer will pick that one up and bring us a new one before next season. The replacement will feature twinkle light reflections. The public may not notice, but it’ll be just a little better next year. The replacement will be even more whimsical than the one this year.”
The ACDC will continue to manage the music from the downtown sound speakers.
“I think it was 2019 when we got the speakers up. We do manage the streaming music that you hear.”
The ACDC has also installed a lighted airplane on the side of the depot building to honor the historic Bessie Coleman. It is a permanent feature whose lights will stay on year round.
“We’ve lit up all of downtown. That was the goal, to be so warm and welcoming. The big feature will be those LED bulbs with colors all over town. The people will really notice visually when we change those bubs out to the LEDs. It will feel brighter, clearer and safer at evening time. It’ll be a good and permanent change.”
In closing, Johnson spoke of one important lesson from the lighting project.
“We encourage people to shop locally. Those sales tax dollars allow us to do these projects. They are local self-tax dollars, and that’s the true impact of spending locally.”