Many years ago, a group of ladies including Mrs. Jane Dunlap, Mrs. Clemmie Collins, and Mrs. Jo Beth Janoush started a Holiday tradition downtown and encouraged business owners to put white lights in their windows and had white light trees installed on the green strip and started “Light Up Your Holidays”. The downtown lighting later expanded to include rooftop lighting on the buildings in the downtown area.

In 2016, the Janoush Family added the beautiful tree downtown, along with many other awesome lighted and animated decorations.

There was a tree lighting ceremony for the new tree, which was a great success and brought many people downtown. After seeing the excitement over our new decorations, a committee was formed to expand on what had been started with the goal of making downtown Cleveland a destination place for people to come look at our downtown lights and decorations.

The committee developed a plan to add white lights to the crepe myrtles downtown and to have a Musical theme on Sharpe Street in the sections from Highway 8 to North Street as a tribute to The Grammy Museum, a Candy Land theme on the block of Sharpe Street from North Street to Court Street, and a train theme for The Depot and Train Museum block of Sharpe Street. The space at the south end of Sharpe Street will be reserved for larger decorations with a lot of lights.

Local businesses, individuals and civic clubs were asked to purchase displays as a donation to the City. The response was overwhelming and decorations were donated. We plan to expand on the lights and displays each year. We hope that you will visit Cleveland this holiday season during our “50 Nights of Lights”.