By William Smith
Twelve years ago, the Burlington Lightscape Project — a board of community volunteers who want to highlight Burlington’s architecture by literally shining light on it — lit up the St. John’s Catholic Church steeple to make it stand out against the starry sky.
It was the beginning of a much larger project.
In 2016, the Lightscape Project helped light nine other Burlington structures: Christ Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, Majestic Estates (formerly St. Paul’s German Methodist Episcopal Church), First Presbyterian Church, First United Methodist Church, First Congregational Church, the Des Moines County Heritage Center Museum, St. Paul’s Catholic Church and the Burlington Northern Locomotive on Main Street.
Since its inception, board members have talked about lighting up the Great River Bridge. By this fall, that should happen.
Energyficient — a Burlington-based lighting distributor that specializes in large-scale lighting projects — has awarded the installation contract for the Great River Bridge to Frank Millard and Co.
Materials are expected to arrive at the end of the summer.
“The construction plans are done at this stage,” said board member Chad Palmer, who is Energyficient president and CEO.
“The light fixtures should show up in early August, and installation will depend on the weather. That’s where it gets fuzzy. If everything goes our way, we should be putting the fixtures in late August.”
Palmer has been the driving force for the project since the start of the Lightscape Project.
His father, who was the city electrician, made it a pet project to light up the bridge before he retired.
He said most of the lights aimed at the bridge tower haven’t been operational in roughly five years.
“It (the new lighting) will be very uniform, and it will be much brighter. It will be about twice as bright, which will be hard for folks to remember because it hasn’t been that bright in well over 10 years,” he said, noting that the cables of the bridge will be illuminated as well.
Snake Alley
In addition to lighting up the Great River Bridge, the Lightscape Project also plans to light up Snake Alley around roughly the same time.
It’s a tricky process, but Palmer knows exactly how he’s going to do it. Once the project is past the design phase, it too will be bid out later in the year. It will be illuminated from dusk to dawn.
“I’m going to illuminate those trees. They will be interesting all year long, whether they have leaves, or snow, or no leaves,” Palmer said. “The spotlights on the alley will be accentuating the alley itself.”
Currently, the alley has no lighting to speak of. Six poles will be equipped with LED spotlights shining down, but at eye level, those poles will have antique lanterns hanging from them. Palmer said that should match the historic nature of the landmark.
Palmer said he got the idea for how to light the alley after he used his expertise to highlight the waterfall at Bracewell Stadium with light.
“It will look very periodic. It should fit,” he said.
The Lights
As can be observed in the bridge diagram, which Palmer based on specifications he obtained from the city, the lights will be placed along the base of the bridge, shining upward at a specific angle to light every inch of the center tower.
Palmer said it will be brighter than even he expected.
“Everything will be brighter than I anticipated because they painted the tower white. We didn’t know they were going to do that. They did that a couple of years ago,” Palmer said.
There will be nine types of LED lights of varying size and intensity, depending on their placement on the bridge. If he had started the project 10 years ago, his lighting options would have been much more limited. LED technology has advanced significantly since then.
“The new design takes into consideration how greatly the tower will be lit, how uniformly it will be lit, and how much spill light there is,” Palmer said. “A lot of people would like to see the night sky stay dark. So we didn’t want to add to the light pollution in the sky any more than we had to.”
The lights will be wirelessly connected to each other, and will automatically dim to 10 percent of power at 10 p.m. during the week, and at 11 p.m. on the weekends. The city will also have manual control of the lights.
Fundraising
The two projects are being funded through a $500,000 fund that has been raised by the Lightscape Project board of directors over the last decade.
But they’re still going to need more money to maintain the lighting system, which is expected to last at least 30 years.
“After we are all gone, these lights will be maintained,” said board member Gretchen Miller.
Right now, the board has roughly $40,000 in an endowment fund established by the Community Foundation of Des Moines County in 2016.
That money will be used to maintain the lighting on all the church temples as well as the Great River Bridge and Snake Alley.
“Our endowment fund currently has $40,000, and needs to grow to $200,000 to produce funds for all future maintenance costs,” Miller said. “It will ensure the illumination of the lightscape of Burlington for many years to come.”
The Burlington Lightscape Project board of directors is currently raising money to grow that endowment fund, and donations are tax-deductible.
To donate, make your check payable to the Burlington/West Burlington Area Development Foundation, designated for Burlington Lightscape, 610 N. Fourth St., Suite 200, Burlington, Iowa.