Nose for News by Sarah Stultz

 

On the way back from my lunch break on Friday, I decided to take a little detour through the downtown.

Since we moved to our new house last year on the west side of town, I unfortunately don’t travel through the downtown as much as I used to, so I occasionally make detours purposely through there to see if anything has changed.

To my delight that day, I saw city crews setting up some of the new Christmas decorations at the splash pad area near the intersection of Fountain Street and North Broadway. I felt like a giddy child, oohing and aahing over seeing something exciting for the first time.

On the west side were two large fountains — much larger than I had previously envisioned they would be — and on the east side was a Santa Claus with a gust of wind moving a series of snowflakes.

It has been a little less than a year since I joined the committee raising money for the new Christmas lights downtown, and it was exciting to see our efforts finally come to fruition.

We have organized burger baskets, bingo at Wind Down Wednesday and presentations at area service clubs, and many of you in our community have stepped up to donate to sprucing up our downtown during the Christmas season.

In addition to the events we organized, we had others who planned events that benefited the lights project, such as The Story Show, the Carter Christmas Lights Show and others.

We could not have done it without all of you.

The donations we have raised were enough to cover the first two phases of our Christmas lights project. This covers the decorations that were put up Friday at the splash pad, along with new lighted wreaths to go over the light poles, holiday banners and lighted garland to go across the street at Broadway’s intersection with Clark and William streets.

We would love to see additional donations come in to go toward lighting the gazebo at Fountain Lake Park and lighting the trees downtown. It is the hopes of the committee that the lights for these last two phases would stay up year-round.

If you would still like to donate, donations will continue to be accepted at the Chamber Foundation. Donations are tax-deductible.

Lastly, we hope you will join us on Saturday as we celebrate the new lights with a brief ceremony downtown!

We will meet at 5:30 p.m. near the intersection of Broadway and William Street for the ceremony, and then we hope you will join us afterward inside the Robert Hoffman Realty building at 212 S. Broadway for refreshments and a silent auction. The silent auction will continue to the Business After Hours Dec. 18, also at the Robert Hoffman Realty building.

Hope to see you there!

Sarah Stultz is the managing editor of the Tribune. Her column appears every Tuesday.