Terminal Tower’s lights are a nighttime city icon of the past decade, glowing prominently every evening. They morph into different hues to cheer for local sports teams, celebrate holidays and raise awareness for causes. (And they even interact with Clevelanders through the @TowerLightsCLE X page.)
If you’ve seen the lit-up tower, you’ve seen the work of Solon-based Vincent Lighting Systems, which coordinated the installation nearly a decade ago. Soon, you’ll see VLS’s work on a whole new level with Illuminate CLE, a permanent display that will put on a large light show in Public Square every night.
“Vegas has some stuff like this, New York has some stuff like this, but nobody's doing it on this scale,” says Bryan Mravec, the director of business development of VLS. “This is the first of its kind.”
Starting on April 16, the light show, which was created by both VLS and Destination Cleveland, will make a performance out of projections, lighting and music. Projections will transform buildings like Terminal Tower, Old Stone Church, Key Tower, 200 Public Square and the Cuyahoga County Court House into canvases for a dynamic, narrative 10-minute event at the top of every hour, complete with synced songs. (The other 50 minutes of the hour will showcase a more static version of mood lighting.)
Illuminate CLE will run hourly from sundown until midnight. The installation is meant to provide evening entertainment to Downtowners, while also increasing lighting in a civically minded safety move.
“At the foundation, it’s a way to activate a public space from both safety and security needs,” Mravec says. “To illuminate the space in a better way than it was currently, but to also activate it in a very creative way.”
To accomplish the show, 16 custom utility poles housing theatrical fixtures were installed throughout Public Square. Half of them are pointed downward, to color-wash the ground around pedestrians.
“Being immersed in it is exactly what we’re looking to do here, and to have people want to hang out in the square and not just use it as a cut-through from East Fourth to West Sixth, or whatever,” Mravec says. “It’s for it to be a place that people want to be and hang out and experience something in a really cool way.”
It’s a natural extension for VLS, which has worked on notable local projects like Playhouse Square’s new marquees, Blossom Music Center’s lighting control systems, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s lights in its recent renovation and systems for some of the city’s lit bridges. On a national level, the company also recently built out the lighting systems for the fourth and fifth exhibitions of Meow Wolf, the massively popular immersive art experience in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
While the Solon-headquartered company’s work is largely behind the scenes, it plays a major role in bringing artistic and architectural visions to life.
“Something special about lighting in our world is it is involved in all of these moments that just exude emotion, whether it’s the thrill, the sadness, of live theater, the elation of a wedding, the energy of a rock concert — lighting plays such a crucial part of the world to drive emotion to the end user, the one who’s experiencing it,” Mravec says. “They might not know why they feel that way, but without it, it’s not there.”
VLS traces its history to 1978, when founder Paul Vincent started as a manufacturer's representative for Strand Lighting. He then grew the business into a large-scale lighting system dealership and equipment rental company. In the late 2010s, the company was bought by the Canterbury Capital venture capital firm, and over the past five years, it has expanded into new verticals of business, including experimental formats of immersive lighting displays like Illuminate CLE.
Illuminate CLE itself has plans to grow. Destination CLE and VLS have intentions to bring future phases of the program to the city, expanding past Public Square and into other parts of town.
“The ultimate goal of this project is to connect the city and the neighborhoods,” Mravec says. “A pipe dream may be that in 10 years, we do a show that plays through the entire city, which would be amazing.”
Find more details about the show at Destination Cleveland's website.
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