St. Augustine, Fla. — Nights of Lights has long been a huge draw to the City of St. Augustine. However, from around Thanksgiving to the end of January, crowds create a traffic and logistical nightmare.
Now, the city’s Vice Mayor is proposing to end the event the weekend immediately after New Year’s Day, instead of the last weekend of January.
“That gives our residents some breathing room,” Vice Mayor Barbara Blonder told Action News Jax Thursday. “They literally are feeling crushed.”
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Lisa Lambka, the owner of ReChic Treasure in St. Augustine, told Action News Jax on Thursday she’d be all in favor of shortening the yearly holiday festivities.
“We still have to keep our lights up and everything. But there’s really not as much business by [late January], and it really drags on,” Lambka explained. “So I think they should shorten it a little bit.”
However, Maddison Hobbs, the owner of Two Sparrows in downtown St. Augustine, told Action News Jax she feels the proposal would actually take away the time most locals opt to enjoy the yearly event while avoiding tourist crowds. Hobbs also expressed concerns about the proposal possibly just pushing those crowds into an even shorter timeframe.
“It’s like the scarcity concept, right? It’s only here for a certain amount of time, so then we would pack so many people into our small little square and our small little downtown area for such a short period of time, and everyone’s trying to see it and enjoy it,” Hobbs argued.
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Vice Mayor Blonder, however, disagreed with that line of thinking.
“It’s a drop off right after New Year’s anyway, I don’t see how it would push people into it,” Blonder said. “I mean that’s a bleed-out that’s happening already, so I don’t see it that way.”
Vice Mayor Blonder added that the change would only be temporary, cutting the event short for just its 2025 edition, as the city focuses on quality of the event in future years.
“I think that’s exactly what I envision, is that we have something that we’re proud of and that our residents can say, I’m okay with this,” Blonder shared. “You know, ‘it’s a lot of people, but it’s managed.’”
Vice Mayor Blonder plans to propose legislation for the timeline change at the March 24th city commission meeting. Action News Jax will keep you up to date on the outcome.
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