The city of Aurora is taking over the Festival of Lights display at Phillips Park from the Aurora Rotary Club, which has operated the event for 15 years.
The popular Christmastime “Festival of Lights” in Phillips Park in Aurora will be under new ownership this year, as the Aurora Rotary Club is turning it over to the city.
On Tuesday, the Aurora city council will accept a donation of the 381 exhibits, including the Tunnel of Lights, the Leaping Deer Arches, the waving Santa Clauses and choo-choo trains.
“It’s one of the favorite traditions in our community,” Alex Alexandrou, the city’s chief management officer, told the city council’s finance committee recently. “The Rotary was concerned about keeping it going. … It’s a natural transition for us.”
The festival will be supervised by the office of special events, like the city’s other celebrations. The city owns Phillips Park.
But the Rotary won’t be out of the picture entirely. The donation agreement with the City of Lights, as Aurora bills itself, specifies club members are not only welcome but encouraged to volunteer for the event.
And with the lights come the instructions, in a thick binder, of just how to set up, run and take down the exhibit. Alderman Edward Bugg recalled volunteering one year and having a club member jump in to correct him on the right way to spool and store the lights.
“I’m glad to see that we are not letting it fall,” Alderman Scheketa Hart-Burns said. “I never wanted to see it going away.”
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Hart-Burns joked about one of the displays: two bears throwing snowballs. “I want to catch the ball just one time!” she said.
During the 15 years the Rotary ran the festival, it collected more than $500,000 in donations from visitors. The Rotary distributed the money to not-for-profit organizations.
The city will continue to do that, according to Alexandrou.
Alexandrou said the club was worried about having enough volunteers to set up, run and take down the display. The work includes individually testing the thousands of bulbs in August and September. Some of the displays have more than 5,000 bulbs in them.
The event almost didn’t happen in 2020 because of a lack of workers until Mayor Richard Irvin made a public plea for volunteers. The city will still have volunteers help, Alexandrou said.
The club estimates that roughly 39,000 cars visited the 1-mile, drive-through display in 2021.
“It’s an exciting opportunity for us,” Alexandrou said.
