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Holiday lights abound in Valley
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YOUNGSTOWN
Local residents can enjoy a multitude of spectacular outdoor holiday light exhibits, many of them featuring FM radio music, at public parks and private residences, without leaving the Mahoning Valley.
All of the displays can be viewed for free, except the million-light Firestone Park drive-through display in Columbiana; and all can be viewed from a motor vehicle, except for the “Electric Garden,” which requires a stroll through Mill Creek MetroParks’ Fellows Riverside Gardens.
Details concerning the displays can be found at youngstownlive.com by clicking on “holiday lights.”
That website, which also lists holiday events, is sponsored by the Mahoning County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“Put the family in the car. Go take a ride and enjoy it,” Linda Macala, CVB director, said of the variety of seasonal light displays.
Sponsored by the Columbiana Area Chamber of Commerce, the “Joy of Christmas” exhibit at Firestone Park, 338 E. Park Ave., calls itself “northeastern Ohio’s biggest and best light display” and features 70 animated light scenes.
“They have a committee that works on it all year round,” Macala said. “They’re always looking to expand and improve it.”
In addition to the lights, the Firestone Park exhibit features more than 100 decorated gingerbread houses, Christmas crafts, face-painting, a nightly coloring contest and photo opportunities with Santa.
Mill Creek’s “Electric Garden” display, which is featured Saturdays and Sundays through Dec. 18, has thousands of twinkling lights, together with an exhibit of decorated and lighted Christmas trees, reflecting a variety of themes, inside the Davis Center, 123 McKinley Ave.
The “Electric Garden” is sponsored by the Friends of Fellows Riverside Gardens, and the 55 locally grown Frazier fir Christmas trees are sponsored by a variety of local nonprofit organizations.
Inside the Davis Center, a photo exhibit documents park history as the park celebrates its 125th anniversary.
“This is becoming kind of a staple event for a lot of families to bring their children and grandchildren here to go through the gardens and experience the different trees and the flowers and the gift shop and the cafe,” said Andrew Pratt, gardens director.
This year, the “Electric Garden” drew some 3,500 visitors during its first weekend, he said.
Boardman Park, 375 Boardman-Poland Road, features 15 elaborate light displays in a drive-through setting from 6 to 10 nightly through Jan. 14. Car radios can be tuned to 88.9 FM for the music.
Downtown Youngstown features a lighted Central Square Christmas tree and other lights on the square and on Federal Street.
Animated light exhibits with accompanying FM radio music are illuminated at private residences at 333 Fairview Ave. and 3946 Montereale Drive, both in Canfield, and at 3810 Dunbar Ave., Austintown.
The animated Montereale display of some 100,000 lights, synchronized to music for car radios and now in its 10th year, is assembled by the homeowner, Dr. Douglas Musser, who is an orthopedic surgeon, his family and their landscaper.
Musser said he is limiting the music this year to four or five holiday songs per cycle to keep traffic moving faster past his house, where about 300 motorists once waited up to three hours to view the elaborate display last year.
Santa Claus greets viewers from an upstairs window as he wraps presents.
“I enjoy doing it, and I do it for the people who come by. I don’t know how many thousands come by, but it’s actually now become a holiday tradition,” he said.
“It’s become a hobby,” he said of the exhibit, which he spends all year planning. “I just do it for the Christmas spirit,” he added.
Other private residence displays are a light show synchronized to FM radio music at 2829 Poland Village Blvd., Poland, and a 25,000-light display at 147 Chestnut St., Struthers.
“At the private homes, the people just have the Christmas spirit and enjoy adding to their displays every year and making them bigger and better and brighter,” Macala observed.
The youngstownlive.com list of holiday light displays was prompted by public inquiries two years ago as to where to see seasonal light displays in the Mahoning Valley and is periodically updated, said Tara Mady, the assistant CVB director, who compiles the list.