City To Test New Holiday Decoration

There will be a touch of Christmas in August in downtown Fredericksburg.

Downtown merchants will have their first opportunity Monday to see a proposed holiday decorating design for the commercial district on Caroline and William streets.

Karen Hedelt, director of economic development and tourism, said Mosca Design of Richmond will install in the front of the visitor center an artificial evergreen garland with LED lights and a holiday bow on the street lamp.

"As you know, holiday decorations in our downtown get a lot of attention and there is strong sentiment about how they look," Hedelt said in an email. "The most popular holiday decoration, the small white lights in the trees in the commercial district, are now very difficult to deliver with a satisfactory effect since the tree canopy has evolved in recent years and the power capacity of each street light fixture can only carry three strands of lights."

Installing the decorations was very time consuming, too. The Public Works Department estimated that staff spent 400 hours on installing holiday decorations and another 200 hours removing all of the decorations. Hedelt said another problem with the small white lights is they would last only one season. The garland and bow decorations come with a five-year warranty. The LED lights are not under warranty, but Hedelt said the lights are easily replaceable, plus they use less energy.

The Downtown Retail Marketing Initiative board of directors (DRMI)  will make the final decision on downtown decorations later this year.

According to the DRMI July 20 meeting minutes, members did submit a grant application to the Fredericksburg Economic Development Authority for $14,000 to make a “Christmas in Historic Market Square: Santa’s Playground."