Main Street Medina wants to make Christmas a little more merry and bright

Main Street Medina Executive Director George Sam presents Medina City Council with a proposal for new Christmas decorations for the square and the annual Candlelight Walk. (Alyssa Alfano, special to cleveland.com)

MEDINA, Ohio -- Christmas is still a season away, but Main Street Medina is already filling out a wish list for this year’s Candlelight Walk.

“Following Candlelight Walk 2022, Main Street Medina surveyed visitors on how they rated the weekend festivities,” said Executive Director George Sam.

“Luminaries and lighting, parade and fireworks activities and shopping hours rated higher. But the extreme cold weather and decorations around the square kind of rated lower,” he said.

The city can’t control the temperature, of course. But decorations are another matter.

Main Street Medina is asking Medina City Council to consider upgrading the Christmas decorations on the square in time for this year's Candlelight Walk in mid-November. (Mary Jane Brewer, special to cleveland.com)

Sam noted that Main Street Medina has invested in new ornaments for the community tree in the gazebo, but he said most of the other decorations around the square are old and worn out and need to be replaced.

“The holiday decorating subcommittee of Main Street Medina is proposing that the city purchase some new decorations for the upcoming holiday season,” he said.

Some of the decor under consideration are larger wreaths for the lampposts in the Uptown and South Town areas, garlands and lights for the arches at the bicentennial commons, garlands for the four arches on the corners of the square, white mini lights, spritzers (decorative 3-D lights) for the trees and more.

Sam said the total estimated cost is around $45,000, with a $15,000 annual installation fee for the tree wraps and spritzers. The rest of the decorations would be installed by city workers and community members.

“Everybody on the committee, I knew you were going to come up with something awesome and I love it,” Ward 1 Councilwoman Jess Hazeltine said after council was shown photos of what the decorations might look like.

“It’s completely nondenominational, it’s spirited, it says ‘holidays,’ it says ‘welcome to Medina,’” she said.

But Councilman-at-Large Bill Lamb wasn’t on board with the direction the Candlelight Walk is taking.

“A couple of years ago, I attended the lighting ceremony and I decided not to anymore. … I started thinking about the reason for not going back to the lighting ceremony,” Lamb said.

He shared that the lighting ceremony used to be about the wonder and magic of Christmas.

“It was really, absolutely, simply about community,” he said. “There were no politicians standing in the gazebo. Nobody got hired to decorate the tree; it was done by kids. The gazebo was full of kids.

" … We weren’t really the complete destination city that we are today,” Lamb said.

He said he feels the event was becoming too extravagant and less about the community.

“We want to make it look great and we want to make it attractive because people want to come and see new things,” Council President John Coyne countered.

Council will continue discussions and make a decision soon so that decorations can be ordered on time.

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