'Tis the season to shine

1 December 2004

Feeling grumpy and looking for something to complain about, I happen upon workers swarming over the Commonwealth Avenue mall. Some are on ladders, others on cranes, wrapping strings of lights around the stately elms on either side of the wide promenade.

Alert to the possibility of conflict - and good columns always depend upon good conflict - I remember some controversy about this, oh, say five years ago. That's when the lights were first proposed and it caused an uproar. They would damage the trees, some said. Others pronounced the scheme gaudy: "tarting up" and "cheapening" the place. My favorite criticism was that the lights would keep awake the vagrants who set up housekeeping along the mall's benches, causing them to lose sleep or, heaven forbid, move to other quarters.

So I call up Mary Hines at the city's Parks Department. How many thousands of angry letters and e-mails, I demand to know, has she received this year? Are there protesters now occupying the mayor's office? And just how many trees has this monstrosity killed!?

Actually, she says, there hasn't been a single complaint of late, not this year or even last year. The trees are doing fine and the mall has never looked so good. The neighborhood seems happy. Cabs make it a point to take tourists along its stretch, showing them just how beautiful Boston can be. Long compared to Paris' Champs Elysees, Commonwealth Avenue might now outshine anything the City of Lights has to offer.

Well, fine. But the cost?

That's $75,000 a year.

I'm livid. The mayor is cutting school budgets while throwing money at this nonsense! Hines brings me up short. The city is spending nothing. Donations, she tells me, support the entire effort.

My high dudgeon deflated, I recall that I too took great pleasure in the lights last year and, in truth, am looking forward to their reappearance. Once novel and contentious, the lights in a short while have somehow become a tradition.

It's a typically Bostonian story. We greet every new proposal around here with dismay. A few years later, we couldn't imagine things any other way.

Lighting up Commonwealth Avenue was one of those "why not?" ideas that came up during a 1998 fund-raiser by chichi retailer Ermanegildo Zegna. Travel entrepreneur Ted Benard-Cutler, admiring the lights erected on the block for the occasion, wondered aloud what it might be like to light the entire avenue. Mayor Thomas Menino thought the suggestion terrific; so too did the parks commissioner, the late Justine Liff.

The start-up money required was huge, but the city, Benard- Cutler and others put together close to $1 million. It was used not only to install an electrical conduit, but also to resod the mall's turf, set up irrigation for the trees and make other improvements. Eventually a volunteer committee took up the cause. About 200 individuals and businesses contributed last year. Co-chair Mimi La Camera thinks there will be more this year. The Hotel Commonwealth kicked in money to light the last block of the mall leading into Kenmore Square. Taking a cue from Howard Dean, La Camera is setting up a Web site for donations ( www.backbaylights.com), hoping that with enough support, the lighting becomes institutionalized.

As well it should be. The lighting is tomorrow night. The lights will stretch 1.2 miles (with perhaps one gap around Massachusetts Avenue, a problem La Camera says will be fixed) and remain up through mid-March. It will be breathtaking.

It's hard to find something bad to say about this latest Boston tradition, perhaps because, in retrospect, this is one of those things that simply is good and right. That makes my job tough - I keep thinking there's some soft underbelly here I've yet to uncover - but what the heck. 'Tis the season.