Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Simple vision of white lights first illuminated Fayetteville square
This time of year, families flock to the Fayetteville square nightly to enjoy the Lights of the Ozarks. While taking in the beauty of hundreds of thousands of lights, they grab hot cocoas and concessions and let little ones take pony and camel rides. They visit Santa and sometimes reindeer as holiday music plays in the background.
While more folks are now aware that the tradition has been a staple for a solid 30 years thanks to the efforts of the city of Fayetteville and the funding of its Advertising and Promotion Commission, the lighting of the square began a few years before that, said Woody Bell.
Downtown Fayetteville Unlimited, the original downtown merchants association of the 1970s and ’80s, was an originating source of the earliest holiday lighting ceremonies, a few of which took place in the late 1980s. They were simpler affairs, the lights outlining the trees and buildings of the businesses on the square, the music sung by local church choirs.
HOW IT BEGAN
As a general manager for Warner Cable’s CATV systems in Arkansas, Woody Bell served on the board of Downtown Fayetteville Unlimited, where he and the other board members brainstormed ways to give back to the community.
“We did a lot of fundraisers … Toys for Tots, March of Dimes, all kinds of stuff,” Bell said. At the time, the Chamber of Commerce and the city government were researching how to revitalize downtowns. “Back in those days, downtowns were dying all across America.”
Along the square were fine businesses, he said: Campbell-Bell department store, Lewis Brothers Hardware, First National Bank, JCPenney, Woolworth’s and Matilda’s Dress Shop, but they were losing customers to the mall. Once Bell became president of the organization, they began offering sales on the weekends to win back traffic to the Fayetteville square. He also started drafting plans on a lighting ceremony, an idea brought up by Carl Grimes, who had a business brokerage firm in Fayetteville.
Grimes, along with his wife and sons, had made a trip to Kansas City that year, in 1984, where they saw the holiday lighting at the Country Club Plaza.
“It was all white lights over the trees and buildings, and people would book the hotel rooms
(around it) just to see that,” Grimes said. “I remember telling my wife, ‘It would be really attractive if we did this’ in Fayetteville.”
As a former owner of a newspaper in eastern Arkansas and previous president of the chamber of commerce in that small town, he was accustomed to finding ways to entice people to visit a community.
Grimes’ office was just off the Fayetteville square, and his company was a member of Downtown Fayetteville Unlimited, so he brought the idea back to them, saying they should consider doing something similar.
“Woody and Don Loftis (manager of a local business supply store) caught the vision very quickly and began to put this project into place, and the year after that, it began to have a life of its own,” Grimes said.
They first grabbed hold of the idea of placing all-white lights around the square. Bell, with the help of a photographer, measured buildings and drew plans. He figured if each business along the square participated and all they did was line the buildings in lights, it would be feasible financially.
“We got quotes from people who would sell us the lights and quotes from people who would install the lights, and we divided it up,” Bell said. He, Grimes and Loftis showed business owners the outlines with estimates for how many feet of lighting they would need and the cost per light, then gave them the option of hiring someone who could do it for them or using a list of installers that they’d already made. “Everybody knew what they were biting off, and everybody pretty much agreed.”
Warner Cable supplied the bucket trucks needed for stringing the lights, and the plan began to spring to life.
“It didn’t come out anywhere near what it looks like now, but it was progressive,” Grimes said. “We grabbed hold of the idea, we committed funds, and (everybody) chipped in some money. Everybody was excited.”
Having come from a small town where new ideas weren’t always welcome ones, Grimes found it wonderful to see Fayetteville running with it. That positive “can do” attitude is what attracted him to the area.
Once the lights were being arranged, Bell decided he wanted to do a little something extra. His neighbor along Arkansas 45 had big, beautiful cedar trees. Woody called to ask if they could use one on the Fayetteville square, and the neighbor agreed.
“We used a trailer (typical for) hauling steel that had a big crane, we cut a tree and helped bring it into town,” Bell said. “The cops escorted us in.”
They used a welding shop to build a big box to nestle the tree in, then placed it using steel wires so the 25-foot-tall tree wouldn’t fall over. The first lighting ceremony must have been in about 1988, Bell recalls. He was the first emcee. The Fayetteville Fire Department got involved, and Downtown Fayetteville Unlimited had Santa join the parade to visit with kids, as well as a number of church choirs to perform Christmas carols. On a shoestring budget, they couldn’t exactly hire a musical act, he said. But the combination was effective.
The response “was all positive, people love that square, old Fayetteville,” Grimes said. “The square represents Fayetteville … It was almost a given that we would build on (it), we would get more lights and do more. It was always ‘Let’s do it again and do more.’”
Grimes said Downtown Fayetteville Unlimited knew it was a lot of work, and after a few years, it got to be too big for the little organization to handle. Then they turned it over to the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce.
“We had three (lighting) ceremonies before we were getting big enough when (we told the) Chamber this could be a thing … and they agreed to take it over,” Bell said. “What started out as a simple lighting … turned into what it is today, which is wonderful.”