The lights are shining more fiercely in one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, and the glow is bound to get brighter.
A pair of initiatives designed to better illuminate streets and alleys in Original Aurora is tackling the issues in different ways, from the flashy to the functional. There’s the city’s $125,000 push to add 24 mid-block street lights, seven street lights along Peoria and up to 200 alleyway lights on streets along the Colfax corridor in North Aurora. In addition, about $200,000 in Community Development Block Grants is set to fund an LED lighting project for the 14-block Aurora Arts District on East Colfax Avenue, a lighting installation designed by sculpture installation artist Susan Cooper that will decorate the district’s businesses, galleries and restaurants.
Residents and business owners hope that the effect of the two separate projects will combine security and artistry for the city’s fledgling arts neighborhood.
“We hope we can get more people walking, biking, moving through the community,” said Peg Alt, community development outreach specialist for the city’s Aurora Urban Renewal division. “We’re looking to improve areas around multi-family homes and businesses.”
The alleyway lighting program is based partly on requests from residents and business owners, and the effort has seen the installation of 100-watt bulbs on two-foot metal arms attached to existing light poles in the neighborhoods bordered by Yosemite Street on the west, I-225 on the east, 6th Avenue on the south and East 25th Avenue on the north. What’s more, the funding also covers a number of streetlights in the area.
The net effect, Alt said, is a better sense of security for residents in the city’s oldest neighborhoods.
“People access their alleys. They feel safer using their alleys. People are using their garages,” Alt said. “It’s a real safety and security (issue). There’s power in lighting. You power up the lights, you power up the community.”
With a goal of reaching 200 alley lights by next year, city officials say the effort with be a natural complement to the Arts District lighting project, a push that’s set to see the installation of colored LED lights by Barbizon Lighting Company on buildings between Florence and Dallas streets along Colfax. The target date for completion is the day of the Colfax Marathon on May 20.
According to Aurora Arts District President Crystal Gardner, the project is part of a campaign to better brand and identify the city’s creative district, an area that’s seen plenty of fits and starts in the past decade.
“Now, both projects are coming together. There’s $200,000 that the city is putting into the art lighting project in a four-block area; there’s also $125,000 of the safety lights. More light in all of the areas is going to provide a feel of more safety,” Gardner said. “(Our) lighting project is going to be artsy. You’re going to know that you came into the district; it’s going to map us. We want to break down that perception of ‘It’s not a fun place’ or ‘It’s not a safe place.’”
Susan Cooper’s light project will include a line of LED lights on Arts District buildings, as well as illuminated globes on rooftops. The colors will change, giving business owners, gallery owners and theater owners the chance to created themed patterns along the strip.
“We’ll be able to do themes with our lights. It’s going to be linear, to depict that a community is coming together,” Gardner said.
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707