here's the scoop:
Toward the light
by Alison Ryan
02/23/2007
Daily Journal of Commerce
The rose may have rightfully snagged a place in the city of Portland's official nickname. But the crisscross of bridges that connect the city's east and west sides deserves the spotlight too.
"We've got an extraordinary collection of bridges," says Paddy Tillett, an architect and urban planner at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca and the chairman of the Willamette Light Brigade (WLB). "When a historic bridges association came here for a conference, they couldn't believe it. They said, guys, you have a museum-quality collection here."
Bringing the bridges into the light is the goal of the WLB, which has worked since the 1980s to celebrate the engineering and architecture of the structures through lighting.
New technology has made artistic night lighting of the bridges more energy-efficient than ever before. On Feb. 14, the Willamette Light Brigade saw the lighting – in shades of magenta and red for the holiday – of the Morrison Bridge. And the group hopes to pull momentum from the success to light up even more of the city's bridges.
DJC: Why light the bridges?
Paddy Tillett: When you look at Portland by day, especially from the air but anywhere near the river, the river is at the center of things and the bridges really make east and west Portland work as one city. There are 10 of them, between Sellwood and St. Johns. And at night, they go away. You don't see them anymore. Sometimes you can see vehicle lights on the bridges, but those palpable connections between the two halves of the community disappear.
I was fresh from London, where a lot of bridges are magnificently lit. My office was on the opposite side of the road from Big Ben, so I could see the Westminster Bridge, which is nicely lit, and I could see Waterloo Bridge, and Lambeth Bridge and so on. And being an architect, I was interested in architectural lighting.
DJC: How did the WLB begin?
Tillett: In '85 or '86, when Mike Lindberg and Pauline Anderson were both county commissioners, a number of people had come to them saying, you know, we should paint the bridges blue, or we should light them, or whatever. So they got them all together, and it was a huge room full of people, and asked the same question: Why do you want to do anything with the bridges?
They said, well, let's meet a couple of times and see what we can do. So we met two or three times and, finally, I said, if we're going to get anywhere, we better get organized. We better have a board, we better have regular meetings, we need to figure out what our objectives are, which bridge we're going to light first. And somebody said, well, if you're so damn clever, you can chair the thing. So I got myself stuck with being the chair.
***
The Morrison Bridge was first lit in December of 1986, Tillett says, to great success. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers sponsored the project, and the lighting design and technical support came together quickly in a simple lighting system that showed off the mechanics of the bridge and how it was built. IBEW ended up putting the lit bridge on its national calendar, Tillett says, "which we're told had a slightly better circulation than Time magazine. The bridge was well in the floodlights, as it were. That was a great encouragement. So we thought, OK, we'll do one a year."
***
DJC: One a year was ambitious.
Tillett: Well, I mean, it only took us a few months to do that one. It was pretty straightforward. Then we tried to get funding for the Hawthorne Bridge and found that it was actually very hard. So we looked at other cities, and found that lighting was usually done either with public money, or a huge benefactor through the city. For example, Guinness Corporation pays for the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver, B.C. And it was a gift to the city, of $1.5 million or something. So we contacted all the likely donors here, and no one was terribly excited about it. We flogged away for a while, and didn't get tremendous amounts of support. We got a little bit here and there, but it was sort of nominal.
***
Funding is the big issue – engineering, installing and lighting bridges is expensive. Tillett's group was involved in the invention of Bridge Pedal, which was a source of revenue for the group until it dried, Tillett says, for various reasons to a trickle and then disappeared. Now, he says, the group's back in a position of looking for another way to do things – and to donors.
***
DJC: How did the Morrison project happen this time?
Tillett: We'd had an anonymous donation an individual had given us to spiff up the lighting on the Morrison Bridge. We'd added colored filters, but it was all done with theatrical gels. And they faded with UV, and had to be replaced, and it was a real scramble to get people over the side of the bridge to replace them.
We have a fellow on our board now, Ed Slavin, who's with Northern (Illumination). He said, you know, I've just been looking at LEDs. And there's this new equipment they're making in Canada, it's not available here yet, but it's bright enough that we could actually use it to floodlight.
He rounded up some of them to show how it would work. When Bridgeport reopened their brewpub, they set them up on the outside of the building so we could (see how) they would light a building. And we all went and looked and thought, "Well, that's pretty cool. We should do that." Then we went to Pacific Power, who had promised $50,000 toward lighting the Burnside Bridge, and said, "How about shifting it to the Morrison Bridge?" With the money we'd already accumulated, plus the $50,000, we could do it. It costs about $66,000 to do the whole thing.
***
Energy efficiency has long concerned the group. The lighting of the Morrison Bridge was switched off during the energy crisis of the early 2000s. Plans to illuminate the Hawthorne Bridge for Rose Festival 2001, and attempts to light the Burnside Bridge, fell as well.
The group, still looking toward the light, began to research generating alternative energy to color the bridges. They looked at wind and photovoltaics, but cost-effectiveness made installations unfeasible. Finally, the group turned to the purchase of green power from local utilities – and the highly efficient LED lights.
***
DJC: The new system is more efficient?
Tillett: The real thing was, here we are showcasing energy efficiency. Which is absolutely what (Pacific Power) wants to do. They thought it was a splendid idea. And that's how it was we were able to put it into effect. And then we lit it on Valentine's Day.
When we switched on, we thought for the benefit of those who turned out to see it we'd show them the capabilities of the system. We could change any of the lights to any color. We went through a series of different colors, a bit of a light show. But from the outset, we said, this is Portland, not Las Vegas. We want to do this quietly and subtly. Typically, you'll see an array of lights. The fixed array, after we'd stopped playing around, for Valentine's Day was reds and magentas. The thought is, we'll be able to change the color combinations for different events.
Something we've recently been suggested, which we haven't followed up on yet, is we could show colors for some event that's in town as a way of making some revenue. That's a possibility. But it'd be a bit difficult to celebrate the Blazers, because black is a tough color.
***
The WLB does have, through a series of almost-lights, spectacular designs for what Portland's downtown bridges could look like when lit. The Legacy Project, initiated by the city to mark the millennium, was a near-miss that created potential schemes for the Broadway, Hawthorne, Steel, Morrison and Burnside bridges.
Should the funding fall into place, Portland would get a look at the lit Burnside Bridge next.
***
DJC: What's ahead for the brigade?
Tillett: Now we're at the stage, with all the engineering done and paid for, that we know we can do it. We've bought a number of fixtures already, that we got a very good price on, that we bought from Seattle. They were going to light a bridge and decided for political reasons that they couldn't. So we made them an appallingly cheeky offer, and managed to put together a very advantageous deal out of that. So we have a bunch of the light fixtures.
Jim Benya, a lighting designer who's in our group, did a redesign of the whole Burnside concept, using that equipment. Then we got Mazzetti to do the engineering. So now, we're all ready to go except for the money. ... It's going to be about $200,000. And that's what we've got to raise now.
Get Involved
www.lightthebridges.org
Membership levels: one-year membership, lamp lighter, $35; bridge tender, $100; bridge builder, $500; bridge master, $1,000.
Benefits (depending on level of membership): authentic rivet from the Hawthorne Bridge, print of the Hawthorne Bridge, print of the Bridges of Portland and a behind-the-scenes tour of the Hawthorne Bridge.
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