Get lit: Part of Columbia’s Main Street to have a year-round ‘ceiling of lights’
A portion of Columbia’s Main Street is set to become a bit more festive at night all year long.
The Main Street District, the city government and a number of Main Street stakeholders are launching a year-round “ceiling of lights” along the downtown 1600 block of Main, a busy section of the street that includes Mast General Store, a host of restaurants and bars, the Nickelodeon movie theater and other businesses.
The 1600 block of Main was closed to through traffic early Wednesday as crews worked to install the 28,000 decorative LED lights that will run the length of the block. Matt Kennell, CEO of the City Center Partnership group behind the Main Street District, said cables will be strung across Main connected to various buildings, to suspend the lights above the street in a sort of canopy.
“This project has been in the works for months, and we are so excited to finally see it happen,” Kennell said. “We have seen this in other cities and really think it will be wonderful for Main Street, potentially as a prototype for other blocks.”
Kennell said Mobile, Alabama is one city that has done such a light canopy. Mobile has its “ceiling of lights” along Dauphin Street.
Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann and the Santa Claus from Mast General Store are set to officially throw the switch for the lights in the 1600 block at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 16, out in front of Mast.
The light project comes at a price tag of $40,000, according to Kennell, with the cost being shared by the Main Street District and some Main Street business owners. The city is helping with infrastructure work for the project, Kennell said.
Kennell said he views the light canopy on the 1600 block as a pilot program and said, if it works out, the program could expand to other nearby blocks in coming years.
“I don’t know if it would be all of Main Street,” Kennell said, “but we’d like to do it on the blocks where the lower, two- and three-story buildings are. I’m not sure it would work as well on the high-rise blocks. But we definitely would hope to do it, probably, on the 1500 block next and the 1700 block, eventually, as well.”
This story was originally published December 14, 2022 at 11:12 AM.
