'Welcoming lights' ring in Naperville Marathon, holiday season
A marathon is coming to town, it now gets dark an hour earlier and Thanksgiving is just around the corner.
Downtown Naperville doesn't need any more reasons than that to brighten the area with more than 300,000 lights that are set to start shining at 6 p.m. Friday.
“It lights up the downtown for the entire holiday season, which encompasses Thanksgiving and the December holidays,” said Katie Wood, executive director of Downtown Naperville Alliance.
Music will play at the corner of Main Street and Jefferson Avenue, where Mayor George Pradel will count down until 6 p.m. and then flip the switch on lights atop downtown rooftops and trees.
Wood said the lights are being turned on in early November for the second year in a row to make the downtown festive for runners in the Edward Hospital Naperville Marathon and Half Marathon, which begins at 7 a.m. Sunday.
“We call them welcoming lights,” Wood said.
Throughout the weekend, downtown businesses also will be hosting early holiday deals and marathon weekend specials.
“We just try to open house and make it inviting for not only locals that are running in the race, but also for if anybody who's coming from out of town,” Wood said.
The annual Holiday Grand Illumination also includes the debut of another type of downtown decoration: 17 painted train sculptures.
“We'll install them that morning, cover them all up and have teens dispersed around the downtown at each one to take off the covering,” Wood said.
Children visiting each train sculpture throughout the downtown on Friday evening can get a surprise, while supplies last, Wood said, and visitors can be among the first to vote for their favorite holiday rail car at downtownnaperville.com.
The trains are the latest in a series of decorated sculptures to come to downtown Naperville, first as a United Way fundraiser, and then since 2012 as a holiday adornment sponsored by Downtown Naperville Alliance. The trains are pulling into town after a series of snowmen were shown off in 2012 and gingerbread cookie sculptures were displayed last year.
Trains will remain at their stations, er, downtown streetscape locations, until mid-January, when the organizations that sponsored them will get them back to auction, donate or keep. The winning sculpture will be chosen at the end of December.