Get amped up for the holidays

City workers will be doubling the lights on the Taft Dock and wrapping LED lights around light poles along 51st Street, all city-owned utility poles along Highway 101 and the Taft and Oceanlake entry arches.

The City is also helping local businesses get involved by awarding $500 grants to create lighting displays, beginning with addresses in the Taft District and north along Highway 101.

Bear Valley Nursery received a lighting display grant that will help enhance its already-impressive annual decorations.

“We are adding more things this year but we haven’t decided what yet,” said Tyler Torrance, who purchased the business from his parents in 2020 and runs it with the help of his mother and his partner, Allison Vickers. “We do want to keep the gingerbread house theme that my parents started.”

Torrance’s parents set a high bar for holiday decorations.

“They would go all-out every year and got so many compliments, so we wanted to keep the tradition going,” Torrance said. “During the year of the local fires, people kept telling us that it helped cheer them up and that felt really good.”

One fire victim in particular sticks in the couple’s memory.

“A little girl came in with her mother,” Tyler said. “Her mom wanted to do something really special for her because was really sad. She had lost her pet bunnies in the fire.”

While the mom was looking for a tree in the Christmas tree lot, her daughter was enjoying the displays.

“She really loved all our decorations,” Tyler said. “When they left, she seemed a little bit brighter and was finally smiling.”

Vickers grew up in Lincoln City and recalls when local lights displays were more prevalent.

“I remember there being so many lights all over town when I was little,” she said. “To bring back the kind of lights displays I remember from my childhood would be so great.”

For more information about the holiday lights grants, email shull@lincolncity.org.