HAS LIGHTS IN THE PARK BECOME TOO SUCCESSFUL?
Albany fundraiser is Covid-freindly, but congestion sparks concern
Capital Holiday Lights in the Park seemed a perfect fit at the start: A loop around the little lake in Albany’s Washington Park would bring people past a few dozen illuminated holiday displays. At the end, whether in a vehicle or on foot, bicycle or horse-drawn carriage, visitors could stop for cocoa and Santa and browsing from craft vendors’ seasonal offerings.
And no one could quibble with where money went from the entry fee: the Albany Police Athletic League, which provides after-school and summer programs, from childcare to sports to outdoor activities and teen leadership training, often to those from underprivileged backgrounds.
Besides, Capital Holiday Lights in the Park wasn’t predicted to be a permanent addition to the calendar when it launched in 1997.
“The average life expectancy of one of these shows when we were sold on it was three to seven years,” said Lenny Ricchiuti, who has been PAL’S executive director since 2002 and retired from the Albany Police Department in 2007. (For the last five years of his APD career, his assigned job was with PAL, he said. The police department does not currently post officers to paid duty with PAL, according to an APD spokesman, though a number volunteer time to it.)
Holiday Lights in the Park, which has grown to an annual attendance of more than 100,000 people and 126 illuminated displays for 2020, is now in its 24th year. This could be its last in Washington Park.
Mayor Kathy Sheehan, for one, would like that to be the case.
When asked Monday if the best solution for the event next year would be for it to be relocated somewhere more friendly to heavy vehicle traffic and less paralyzing and disruptive to neighborhoods and a public park in the heart of the city, Shee
han said simply, “Yes.”
While Lights in the Park has always required a balancing act between qualityof-life considerations of park-adjacent residents and accommodating a fundraiser for a community organization that all agree provides valuable services to the city’s youth, Sheehan said, “This year, in particular, the scale has tipped, and we’ve got to really revisit what we’re doing here.”
In the shorter term, Sheehan’s administration is working to reduce traffic con
gestion by insisting that PAL institute a timed reservation system for admission, at least on weekends for the remainder of the season, which ends Jan. 3, Sheehan said. She said she hoped it could be in place by this coming weekend. The current online ticketing system does not specify admission time. Tickets cost from $25, for a private vehicle with up to nine passengers, to $125 for a commercial bus.
An ideal spot for next year’s Capital Holiday Lights, the mayor said, would be the W. Averell Harriman state office campus on the city ’s western reaches, although, as state land, it is not within the city ’s purview to grant permission for relocation there.
Many Washington Park-area residents would be glad to see Holiday Lights in a new setting for the 25th anniversary, its stay in its original home long since worn out, according to representatives of surrounding neighborhood associations and other constituencies.
Daniel Mceneny, who has lived on or near the park for 22 years and has been on the board of the Washington Park Conservancy for six years, the past two as president, said, “Over 80 percent of our calls are from neighbors and residents wanting to address problems with (Holiday Lights) and their bad stewardship of the park.”
“Every year there have been multiple nights when traffic was locked down — basically complete gridlock for three hours straight. It’s even worse this year,” said Shadi Khadivi, who has been president of the Washington Park Neighborhood Association since mid-2019 and involved with the organization for the past eight years.
She said, “If there’s ever a fire, if someone has a heart attack, people worry whether a fire truck or ambulance could even get down some of these streets.”
Albany Common Council member Richard Conti, whose Sixth Ward covers most of Washington Park and surrounding neighborhoods, is a resident of the Center Square neighborhood, with a home near Lark Street. Conti, elected the year Lights in the Park started and not intending to run again after his term expires at the end of next year, said he checked out traffic during each Lights in the Park weekend so far this season as vehicles came to a complete standstill.
The worst yet was this past Saturday, when traffic was stopped for hours on virtually every street in and around the park, including Madison Avenue, Washington Avenue, Willett Street, Henry Johnson Boulevard and Lark Street. At one point on Saturday night, traffic stretched on Madison from Willett about a
Every year there have been multiple nights when traffic was locked down — basically complete gridlock for three hours straight. It’s even worse this year.”
— Shadi Khadivi
mile and a half west, almost to South Main Avenue, according to multiple reports sent to the Times Union.
Conti said he watched an emergency vehicle creep along Lark Street during a call, able to go faster than prevailing traffic but still quite slowly. Businesses are also suffering. Delivery drivers and customers of restaurants near the park who were trying to access takeout or curbside pickup, the lifeblood of restaurants as more close their dining rooms, reported 20- and 30minute delays this past weekend. The Seeclickfix app, which allows city residents to report problems, contains accounts of people being late to work because of stopped CDTA buses and of others abandoning buses to hurry the remaining blocks, to get to work or to get home to relieve babysitters.
Critics say their concerns extend beyond weekend traffic from the post-thanksgiving start of Capital Holiday Lights in the Park tours to their end soon after New Year’s Day. They object to grass ruined by extensive trenches dug for cables, multiple electrical junction boxes placed throughout the park, damage to trees and bushes around the park as well as to hillside seating areas at the lakehouse amphitheater and to the lakehouse bandshell.
Setup began in late October, and PAL’S displays won’t be removed until weeks into January, with underground cables not
cleared until after the ground thaws in the spring.
In other words, as Mceneny of the Washington Park Conservancy put it, “We estimate that more than 65 percent of the park is given over to PAL for more than three months of the year. At night it is virtually unusable, and when it is usable, it’s not very pleasant to be tripping over extension cords and stakes and whatever else is lying around.”
According to Mceneny, “PAL does what it can to mitigate damage, but there’s still very real damage,” including wires left wrapped around trees for years until bark has grown around them, he said.
“We have a lot of folks who are happy to see us every year and a lot of folks who are not happy to see us,” Ricchiuti said last week. He was interviewed before Sheehan made her comments about moving Holiday Lights in the Park, and he did not reply to a request for a response to the mayor's desire that PAL'S event be relocated.
Ricchiuti said last week, “I don’t think it’s that different from people who live around parks like The Crossings (in Coloinie) or Tawasentha (in Guilderland). They’re affected by what goes on there, just like people in Altamont are when the fair is going on every summer,” he said.
Capital Holiday Lights in the Park still has its fans.
“I believe it would be a tremendous loss to Washington Park and city if this event
were moved to a different location,” said Owusu Anane, who represents Albany’s Pine Hills on the Common Council. Anane said, “My hope is that all parties can come together and resolve the traffic issues connected to this event so that this cherished light show remains a staple of the holiday season in Washington Park.”
Patrick Noonan, chairman of the Lark Street Business Improvement District and owner of two eateries on Madison Avenue near the park, acknowledged traffic could be a challenge but said, “While people are sitting in their cars, we’re getting their
eyeballs on our business signs. They see what we’ve got going on.”
Advocates of relocating Capital Holiday Lights in the Park believe it would thrive in a vehicle-friendly location like the Harriman campus, with easy access from I-90 and four-lane thoroughfares like Washington and Western avenues. The change of locale would also further efforts being made in the smaller, closer neighborhoods and streets around Washington Park.
Matthew Peter, who has lived near the park for eight years and represented the area in the Albany County Legislature for the past year, said, as the former chief of staff to Sheehan and current executive director of the city ’s parking authority, he considered himself a PAL supporter.
“They do a tremendous amount of good, and I’m in favor of having a big fundraiser like this for them,” Peter said. "But not in the park."
The trade-offs required by Capital Holiday Lights in its current form are no longer acceptable to many of his constituents and other residents, Peter said.
He said, “It’s just gotten too big.”