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Downtown taking on a holiday look
Grants Pass Daily Courier (Wednesday, November 21, 2007)
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By Susan Goracke of the Daily Courier |
| | | | | TIMOTHY BULLARD/Daily Courier
Adam Coleman and Craig Payne guide a 600 pound lighted Christmas card into position Tuesday. |
It may be a cliche, but downtown Grants Pass is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
This is the fourth year Evergreen Federal Bank has set out its Magical Musical Christmas Murals, but already, those sparkling fiberoptic "Christmas cards" have become a Grants Pass tradition.
Beginning last week, 40 fiberglass nutcracker statues and 18 lighted murals began appearing, thanks to the crew at Don Oliver Construction, which gets faster with installation each year, Devine said.
The murals, 5-feet-wide, 10-feet-tall and 1-foot thick, weigh about 400 pounds each.
"We're very excited to have the murals back," said Towne Center Association President Jeff Voigt, who represents downtown business owners. "They create the kind of atmosphere that welcomes shoppers downtown. We just see the murals as an extremely positive thing."
Beginning Friday, TCA's trolley will be rolling for holiday shopping as well as mural looking, Voigt added.
"We don't promote it as the Christmas Mural tour, but a lot of people ride the trolley just to see the murals at night."
TCA's trolley runs downtown Fridays through Dec. 21 from 4 to 7 p.m. and on Saturdays until Dec. 22 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Fridays, the trolley starts at Blind George's Newsstand at 4 p.m., then heads for stops along Sixth Street at the Bead Merchant, River Rock Cafe and Evergreen Federal Bank. The trolley then heads north on Seventh Street for a stop at the Daily Courier parking lot at Seventh and J streets, before heading back over to Sixth Street and a stop at Dutch Bros. Coffee House at the corner of Sixth and D streets at 4:30. The route repeats every 30 minutes.
On Saturdays, the trolley begins at the Chamber of Commerce on Vine Street at 9 a.m., then heads south on Sixth Street with stops at Evergreen Federal Bank North, Dutch Bros. Coffee House, the Growers' Market (Nov. 24 only), the Welcome Center, Evergreen Federal Bank, the Daily Courier parking lot, the downtown Safeway, and back to the Chamber of Commerce on Vine Street at 9:30 a.m. The route repeats every 35 minutes.
Kerrie Walters, tourism and downtown coordinator for the Grants Pass Visitors and Convention Center, said the murals and shopping in downtown Grants Pass were included in a cooperative ad with other Southern Oregon Visitors Associations, sent to newspapers throughout northern California and reaching a potential of 150,000 readers.
"Last year, we had a tour bus that came from San Francisco that took in the holiday lights and sights in Ashland and Grants Pass," Walters added. "I know it's on a lot of people's radar."
Hyla Lipson, who owns Fiberoptic Lighting, the Grants Pass company that built the murals, said her company had hoped to get orders to build similar murals for other cities, but so far that hasn't happened.
"We found it's a very difficult project to replicate in another city, although we've been working with some zoos," Lipson said. "What's fun is, it has given us brand recognition."
Lipson also noted that since those murals were built, "Everyone's going green now. Those murals are definitely energy-efficient."
Even with 5 to 10 miles of fiberoptic light cables running through each mural, each is powered by five or six 50-watt halogen bulbs, drawing only 5 amps or less of electricity.
"When you think about it, the circuits in your house are either 10 or 25 amps," Lipson added. "So the merchants don't seem to mind using their electricity to power the murals."
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