Burlington, VT – The Burlington Business Association (BBA) is excited to announce an expansion of the downtown holiday lighting project, which had a successful first year in 2016. Since then we have expanded our downtown lighting, this year including College St. The white holiday lights will be installed by the Burlington Electric Department, who helped to facilitate the initiative.

The idea to add holiday lights to the side streets came from the BBA’s Downtown Action Group committee, whose members proposed it as a way to extend the festive feeling of Church Street along Burlington’s side streets. A grass roots effort was quickly underway, championed by Kara Alnasrawi, who was the DAG Committe Chair at the time and now runs the Church Street Marketplace.

Winter lights create a warm, welcoming environment on the street to coincide with the festive winter season, provide additional safety through well lit streets, and are an effective way to help drive holiday traffic to side street businesses and further extend the holiday vibrancy through the downtown. Since the pilot project was installed in 2016, the holiday lighting project has garnered interest from other side street businesses, and the BBA will aim to work with businesses throughout the downtown to expand the scope of the lighting to include additional street lamps for upcoming holiday seasons.

We’d like to thank this year’s sponsor, Burton Snowboards. Burton has enthusiastically supported this program in previous years, and we are very grateful to have them as a sponsor.