Operation snowflake replaces lights

Posted By BRANDON BLATZ Sun Media

Posted 2 months ago

The lighted Christmas decorations that have lined 48 Ave. and other city streets for years are getting older, and a plan coined "Project Snowflake" is in the works to replace them.

The current decorations are put up for the holiday season and taken down afterwards. This requires a significant investment of time for city employees and the lights are only useful for the Christmas season.

Instead of committing a large amount of labor to assembling and disassembling seasonal fixtures, the city in partnership with the Camrose Chamber of Commerce, City Centre Camrose and Tourism Camrose, is looking to change the decorations.

Paul Nielsen, manager of community services, said that since the city is planning on replacing the fixtures anyway, they might as well maximize their usage by using a bit more generic, winter-themed decorations, allowing them to be used throughout the year.

"This is going to be a long term project, but our goal is to do some general lighting enhancements within the city with [our] partners.... We like the Christmas themed decorations, but they're only really usable then [during the Christmas season]."

Nielsen said an example of an upcoming event where the new "winter" lights could be used outside of the Christmas season is when the Olympic torch comes to Camrose on Jan. 15.

City Centre Camrose is looking at adding rope lights to line Main Street and the downtown area and plans are also in the works to add decorative lighting around Mirror Lake. Nielsen said it would create more of a "magical atmosphere" for the skating area and the lake area, which are heavily used by the public, especially on nice evenings.

The city budgeted $15,000 to start the project in 2009 and the funding wasn't used this year, so the money will be carried forward into 2010.