Union City Downtown’s Future About to Get Even Brighter

Union City’s downtown has a bright future thanks to the plethora of projects undertaken there in recent years, but that future is about to get even brighter … literally.

An idea generated more than two years ago during a brainstorming session with downtown merchants and building owners will be unveiled Friday night as part of Union City’s Homecoming weekend, when new lighting atop almost every downtown building is turned on at 8 p.m.

“I’ve always thought of this project as the icing on cake,” said Steve Bishop, a project manager with the Union City Community Foundation. “There’s been so much progress made downtown in recent years, and if this lighting looks anything like what I think it will, it will be a very cool effect.”

The downtown brainstorming meeting took place in May 2022, facilitated by Bishop, Borough Manager Cindy Wells, and nonprofit UC Action president Terri Migliaccio. A number of ideas were suggested and several implemented since, but the suggestion to create some kind of lighting scheme turned out to be a tougher nut to crack.

“I had no idea what that might look like,” said Wells, reflecting back on the meeting.

Wells and Bishop started by pulling a meeting together with local electrician Larry Hyer and a lighting specialist from Erie, walking the downtown and talking about different ways lighting could be used on the buildings to make them “pop.”

The first idea, to “wash” the building facades with light from below or above, seemed like it might do the trick until Hyer realized that the downtown’s street lights already washed the buildings to an extent that additional such lighting wouldn’t make a noticeable difference.

The project stalled for a while, until Bishop Googled “downtown lighting schemes” and found several images of communities that had strung lighting across the tops of their downtown buildings.

He called several of those communities and found that some of the lighting was seasonal in nature, rather than permanent, or for other reasons weren’t applicable to Union City. But he then called the community of Ripon, Wis., a city of about 7,900 residents some 90 miles northwest of Milwaukee, and spoke with Craig Tebon, executive director of Ripon Main Street that administers the lighting there.

Tebon said Ripon first installed their downtown lighting some 30 years prior, and when asked if he felt the expenditure of time and money to install and maintain the lighting was worthwhile, Tebon didn’t hesitate to say it was. Ripon, he said, has become known as the “city of lights” in the region because of the lighting effect.

“Finding Craig was the key,” Bishop said. “I had a hundred questions about the kind of wiring, the kind of fixtures and bulbs, the annual cost of electricity to run a string of lights, how they attach the wiring and fixtures to the building parapets, how often they have to replace bulbs, and more.

“Craig had the answers to everything, and because Wisconsin can have similar weather to Union City, it gave us a comfort level that we could do essentially the same here,” Bishop added, noting the LED bulbs have long life spans and require very little power.

The project organizers then asked every building owner to sign an agreement giving UC Action permission to run the lights across their buildings. Individual building owners will provide their own electric, while some building owners on the corners of the larger blocks said they would be willing to provide the electric for the entire block of lights.

Wells said that cooperation is typical of how the downtown’s property owners and businesses have responded to all of the downtown efforts of recent years.

“We haven’t had any negative responses from business owners for any of our downtown projects,” she said. “They have been very supportive and I think they realize we are trying to make improvements that will ultimately help all businesses in the borough.”

Hyer rented a lift and got working on the project in the past few weeks, with a goal of having the project ready for unveiling on Homecoming weekend. The initiative includes almost 2,300 feet of commercial-grade wiring, with bulb fixtures spaced every 18 inches, and the initial set-up includes more than 1,500 “warm white” light bulbs. In several locations at the end of a building or block, the lighting is being “wrapped” around the ends of the buildings.

Once the wiring, fixtures and bulbs were adhered to the parapets at the tops of the buildings, Hyer turned his attention to making the electrical connections for each building or block, and installing “astronomical timers” that should have all the lights turning on and off in close proximity to one another. Those timers are also supposed to automatically adjust as the amount of daylight changes, and when clocks spring forward and fall back.

For now, the lights will come on at approximately 8 p.m. and go off at midnight. Tebon said in Ripon they typically conduct two annual rounds of bulb replacement and fixture repairs, in the spring and fall, as needed. UC Action in its funding for the project from the Erie Community Foundation and Union City Community Foundation, has set funding aside to address that maintenance.

Bishop said he’s a little nervous approaching the light-up on Friday night, both because the approximately $46,000 project is a sizeable investment in the downtown, and because until he actually sees it he won’t know for sure if it’s going to generate the “wow factor” he’s hoping for.

“Like with the downtown mural projects, you don’t really know what it’s going to look like until it’s installed,” he said, then joked that if the lighting doesn’t give the desired effect, “I’ll just say it was Cindy’s idea.”

Wells said the lighting is part of the effort to create an environment where entrepreneurs feel they can be successful, where property owners believe they can earn a return on their investment, and that local residents are proud of.

And, she added, “I hope those who aren’t from Union City remember how great Union City is, and the lighting will help them do that.”