Colten Williams began putting together his Christmas light show a decade ago at the behest of his grandmother, who was inspired by light shows she had seen on TV.
But trouble started brewing in Kingsville after several neighbours lodged complaints about their street being crowded with cars for six weeks every year.
This month, the city enacted a new bylaw that would force the Williams family to apply for a permit for their display while also placing restrictions on the number of hours they would be allowed to leave the lights on.
“They basically limited the amount of hours I could have my show from about 28 hours a week down to 10 hours a week,” Williams said. “So you have 500 hours, 600 hours worth of set up time just to have 40 hours the lights on all month long. That’s an insane amount of work.”
Rogers said the council is sad to see them turn off the lights but said the show had outgrown its location as well.
“We were saddened to learn that the Williams family will not move forward with their light display this year,” he said.
“Our discussions with the family last year at a council meeting we both agreed that they had outgrown the neighbourhood.”
Rogers went on to say that the city had tried to work with the family to find an alternative location but was unable to meet their demands.
I feel like I need to see pics of the parking situation/attendance on the street. Like, yeah… Lights are fun and that sucks, but also… this must have been a pretty big fucking problem if it warranted this kind of response. Article says the show would end after 20 minutes and immediately an entirely new crowd would filter in to replace the previous one. Sounds like lot of vehicles waiting to get in to view it in a residential neighborhood not designed for that kind of volume. I’d probably bitch to the council too after several years of enduring that.
The address is pretty easy to find. It’s a terrible spot for crowds, with no lots or sidewalks.
And really the big problem here is the cars, 20 cars takes up a lot more space than even 60 people. People could even fit on the lawn if space allows. The cars make noise honking and running, they are the ones with bright lights. If everyone got off a bus, watched a show, and walked to the next stop it wouldn’t be nearly as problematic. Perhaps a designated area nearby where cars are expected to park and people and their family could walk to see the show could have been a solution.
And this is why north american suburban neighbours in how they are designed suck IMO. You need a car to get around, even just to go get milk.
Suburban neighboorhoods should really be designed like communities with mixed density housing, small shops that you can walk to, pedestrians and cyclists trails that connect two points quicker in a shorter distance then by car. Mixed zonning for offices and businesses and nothing over 6 stories.
Designing suburbs like this would allow the density required for a tram line and mixed transportation modes. It would also potentially solve suburban sprawl that then compounds the “car is king” problem.
Everything mentioned above is possible, but requires people to accept a level of change.
Think how Amsterdam as a whole transformed its self starting in the 1970-1980 from a gridlocked “car is king” mentality to pedestrian and livability first approach.
Perhaps a designated area nearby where cars are expected to park and people and their family could walk to see the show could have been a solution.
If there’s any space nearby that could reasonably hold, say, 50 parked cars. If there’s a mall, or an office building that’s empty at night, within a few blocks you could maybe make it work, but not in the middle of a large area of houses.
My guess is that there would still be problems, though, because it’s cold outside in December and nobody seems to know how to dress for the weather anymore. They’re using the cars as portable heat sources.
I think them using cars as portable heat sources highlights the car centric part of our culture. We would rather drive what is basically a private living room and view the attraction in that thing.
Holiday drive thru light shows in the GTA pretty much sums up the car centric nature of Ontario.
http://www.todocanada.ca/drive-thru-holiday-light-displays-in-gta/amp/
They should just end the drive thrus at a Timmie’s, nothing is more Canadian.
My home town used to put lights all over their waterfront, with cool moving light shows and stuff, it was something i really enjoyed as a kid and got us out and walking by the water in winter. I haven’t seen them do it to the same scale as when i was a kid for many years. It used to be dozens of displays, now there are just a few trees that get lights. I wonder if people not wanting to leave their cars influenced it. Soon the santa parade will be stationary and we can all just drive past it at this rate.
I think it really just came down to costs and city budgets. Cities always seem to cut public funding allocated for things like this when trying to balance their budgets.
That is why I find a few of the comments that were suggesting the city should hire the man a little counterintuitive. The first thing the city would cut would be the light show saying it’s to expensive and to extravagant, probably in the same year they hire him even.
I’m sure there’s some particular joy in doing this to your own house, but the city should hire this guy to do a big display in the city centre. Probably more adequate parking, people maybe make a night of it and go to local restaurants, you could pick your place to minimise upsetting neighbours.
Once a hobby turns into a full time job it looses its meaning. Plus being hired means you are no longer your own boss.
Also, we seem to forget cities always cut budgets for things. It used to be the city may have decorated its streets with lights or setup decorations in public plazas. A city may have also had it’s own light show that diminised in quality year after year, now a distant memory due to skyrocketing costs.
There may have been public fireworks show or a puplic skate rink. All those things usually are the first to go in a effort to save cash when city funded.
This man was doing a economic service to his town in terms of tourism on his own dime. The city shot it self in the foot here, then they tried to have their cake and eat it too asking him to pay for pirmits
How bad was the car situation that prompted this level of intervention?
If you’re selling your house because you can’t put the Christmas lights that you want you’re an idiot.
“We both agreed they had outgrown the neighbourhood”
What a class act.
I hope they find a better town to show off dem lights.
Buncha Scrooges over there in Kingsville Apparently. Those massive restrictions on hours plus the requirement for a “permit” -cough-moneygrab-cough- are just ridiculous. I’d love for there to be a light show like that in my neighborhood.
It sounds like people who live around there were taking ridiculous times to get in and out of their houses because of the traffic. This would also be a bad situation for emergency services such as ambulances and firetrucks, potentially.
So it’s a traffic problem, not a capacity problem.
Ban on street parking, direct people to the closest lots. Problem solved.
It’s in the middle of suburbia. There are no nearby lots, and their street has no sidewalks.
Downtown Kingsville to the edge of the suburbs is about 2km in the furthest directions.
So the issue is that the city has decided to not build sidewalks for super walkable distances, there are more than enough lots around.
If it’s like the places I grew up, people are driving through neighborhoods. They’re not parking, but driving at basically a crawl (sometimes pausing to take pictures). If they enforced local traffic only (i.e. anyone who wanted to see it had to go on foot), that would solve the issue so long as the parking exists somewhere.
It’s not. It’s a 17-minute show timed to music.
I mean, there were specific shows at a couple houses when I was a kid, but no one stopped there to block everyone for the whole thing because that’s a dick move. If people are, then they definitely needed to enforce local traffic only and a permit to set all that up and organize it makes sense to me.
File a permit with the city to put up Holiday decorations. Ludacris. Do I need one if I put a tree inside my house?
If it generates traffic and fire safety issues and requires coordination with police, fire, and/or other municipal services to make it safe, then yeah, a permit makes sense as it covers all that. The other option is to tone it down. It’s all fun and games until you or a loved one is dying in a fire or waiting for an ambulance that can’t get to you
Over here in Europe we’d just arrive by public transport.
Yea but Canada refuses to build a functional country. Hell we can’t even keep bike lanes installed without drivers feeling attacked.
Permits are agreements with a processing fee.
How is this not the onion?!
Because you dont live there and it’s not you being inconvenienced. So you have no sympathy for the neighbors.
I have sympathy for the neighbours, I don’t have sympathy for the people with the lights who are ridiculous
I feel like this should be overridden by the guarantee to freedom of expression
How about freedom to live in a quiet neighbourhood and sleep without a ton of noise and excessive light glaring through your windows?
I love Christmas lights but there is a line of respect for your neighbours and no one has the right to just do whatever they want without regard for others. A truly free society means balancing your freedoms with respect.
Don’t know why people are down voting you. It’s a valid point.
Until your neighbour does it. Houses are for living in. Having a little Christmas display is great. Having an automated light show that last 17 minutes a cycle and took 500 hours to set up is something that should be done at a venue with the proper infrastructure.
The message isn’t the issue, the medium is. Through the operation of the lights and music, these homeowners are infringing on the rights of others.
The article brings up “enjoyment of property”, this is a legal phrase in Canada.
Yes, I’m familiar with the term. I didn’t get the impression that the owners were at odds with their neighbors so much as local council. I am not advocating for it to go such, but I’m curious how a court would view it.
