Downtown seen under new light
Downtown Houston celebrated two debuts Sunday: rolling out its newly designed holiday decorations while simultaneously bringing a special edition of Sunday Streets for the first time to the center of the city.
As a large part of Main Street and segments of Congress and McKinney were closed to vehicles, hundreds of Houstonians walked, biked and danced at community events, such as one promoting exercising. Many children were drawn to holiday music played by groups such as the Houston Brass Quintet.
Passers-by were surprised by the display of seven 30-foot-tall Christmas trees decorated with translucent white, lighted balls that, as the night fell, reflected on the glassy downtown buildings along Main Street.
“It’s beautiful and I love how they put a lot of detail into it,” said
Tami Dougherty, walking along Main with her husband, Jay, and their dog, Bela.
Jay Daugherty said they moved recently to downtown and he “would have never guessed that people can have this. This is really neat to see, really nice.”
Bob Eury, Downtown District president, said the time had come for downtown to get a new holiday dressing after around a decade using the same decorations.
The decision to revamp the holiday celebrations in downtown with “new things to see and new things to do” came after Mayor Sylvester Turner returned from to South America in July, Eury said.
The mayor “told me that he saw vibrant streets there, full of people, things to do everywhere, and that he wanted to work on projects that could bring that kind of (vibe) to our city,” Eury said.
The idea was music to his ears, said Eury, who has worked for years to revitalize the district.
“We needed new holidays decorations for Main, and we have freshened it up completely this year,” he said.
For that purpose, the city contracted the French firm Blacheré Illumination, which has been behind such projects as decorating the Eiffel Tower for the millennium celebration in Paris.
With the new decorations and the Sunday Streets event, we had “several things coming together at the same time. Main Street is really coming back,” Eury said.
Colored, twinkling lights installed along Main Street are among the highlights of the new decorations. In Market Square Park, signature holiday decor dots the surroundings of the largest mistletoe ball in Texas, according to the district’s office.
For Turner, however, “it’s nice to walk and enjoy the decoration,” but what he wanted was to bring “Houstonians together,” he said.
“Houston is very diverse, but you can be diverse and segregated and apart,” Turner said. “But you can be diverse and inclusive, and that is what we seek in Houston.”
That’s the kind of feeling that April Wang and Allen Wen, both residents of Houston from China, said they were enjoying during downtown’s first Sunday Streets.
Wang said she is “really liking what the city is doing for people to enjoy the holidays together; it’s very Houston.”
Allen added, “Houston is very diverse, not like other cities that we know. You see people waving (to strangers) and having a good time.”
Sunday Streets is a partnership between the mayor’s office and Cigna, a health service corporation. The events take place in different communities on street segments that are closed to vehicular traffic so residents can freely and safely ride bicycles, walk, and enjoy dances and other recreational activities. The last Sunday Streets was celebrated in Rice Village at the beginning of November.