Gastonia puts $90,000 into new LED lighting system downtown

If you’ve noticed lately that downtown Gastonia seems a little brighter in the evening, it’s not your imagination.

It’s the product of a $90,000 investment by the city to install dozens of new LED lights and fixtures up and down three major thoroughfares within the historic business district.

“It is definitely noticeable at night,” said Joe Albright, the city’s public utilities director.

The project was carried out in the early fall and wrapped up a week or two ago. In all, 90 new LED lights and fixtures were mounted along Main Avenue, South Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The new 100-watt lamps have replaced the standard streetlights that were there for many years, with brand new “acorn-style” heads going up on existing poles downtown.

The money for the project came out of the city’s electric utilities budget, and is part of a widespread effort to outfit more municipal buildings and exterior areas of the city with LED lighting. For example, City Hall is being outfitted with LED lighting as part of $230,000 in overall renovations to that structure in the coming months.

City leaders say one distinct benefit of the change is that LED lights provide a crisper and brighter white light, offering a greater feeling of safety by improving visibility and less shadowing at night.

On top of that, technology advances and cost reductions over the years have made it more affordable for cities and more logical from a financial perspective, Albright said.

“When LEDs first came out, the price points for the technology were still high,” he said. “They’re still higher than standard lights, but the payback is better because of the reduction in electricity.”

LED bulbs can operate as long as 10 years, sometimes lasting twice as long as traditional incandescent counterparts. The lights downtown are also linked to a software system that will allow them to be dimmed as needed, and also provide outage information back to city staff.

In the daytime, it’s likely hard to tell any change has been made downtown.

“Really the only difference as far as their appearance is the new (fixtures) have black metal on top, and the older ones didn’t,” Albright said.

Downtown isn’t the city’s only area of focus in making the upgrades.

“We have them now in places like Franklin Boulevard, and some on Garrison (Boulevard),” said Albright. “They’re spread out, but we’ve got a plan to put them on all the major corridors.”

You can reach Michael Barrett at 704-869-1826 or on Twitter @GazetteMike.