You may have heard that the PNA Business Group successfully gained a Neighborhood Matching Grant from the City to create a new Holiday Lighting tradition for the neighborhood, replacing the LED monkeys that had brightened the business district until they were retired in 2020.
The PNA is seeking to have 200 new LED lights – 50 each of 4 different animals – ready to go up in early December along our business corridor. The Holiday Lighting Committee, with representatives from the PNA, the Zoo, local businesses, and the community, was convened in January to chart the course for this project. The Mission is to create a new, quirky, secular, business district-focused lighting tradition in partnership with the Woodland Park Zoo that represents PhinneyWood.
To help hone down the massive list of possibilities, the Steering Committee decided that the focus should be Pacific Northwest, Cool, and Easily Identifiable with regards to the final choices. The Zoo submitted a list of animals that they house and could help create a new mythos for this tradition: pond turtle, lynx, river otter, owl, and wolf.*
We are asking residents of the Phinneywood community to help narrow down the choices to a final 4 that we will develop. Because we want to make sure your favorite PNW animal that did not make the list has a shot, you can also enter any PNW animal as a “write-in” option as well. Are you passionate about that animal making it to the finals? Make sure you tell your neighbors and friends/family who live in the community to vote and why they should support your choice!
To participate, take the survey here.
The survey will be open until July 31, after which we will tabulate the votes and let everyone know what is next.
*7/8/21 update: Thanks to community feedback, we removed raccoon from the list of options due to negative historical racial caricature.
Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash