Holiday Lights Turned Off In Forest Hills Because Of Lack Of Cash

FOREST HILLS, NY -- Holiday lights that have spread cheer through Forest Hills for decades will go dark this year unless the city stumps up $15,000 needed to fund them.

For more than 30 years, the white snowflake-shaped lights have glittered along Austin Street and Continental Avenue, home to a mix of local stores and national retail chains. For most of those years, it was run by the Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce which hired a company to install and maintain them with donations collected from shop owners along the street, Chamber President Leslie Brown told Patch.

"It started when merchants got together and collected money to pay for the lights," Brown said. "In the last 10 years there's been virtually no merchant contributions, it's all been from property owners. Now even those are diminishing."

Brown said donations have dwindled so much that the chamber could no longer afford to hang the lights this year, despite her visiting each of the nearly 200 stores lining the strip to ask for contributions.

"I have personally worked to get funding for this holiday lighting program for all these years and it just seemed like I wasn't going to be able to meet those goals," she said. The chamber just cannot be responsible for it any longer.

But Forest Hills resident Cat Rakowski is giving the effort one last shot. She created a GoFundMe page to save the holiday lights on Tuesday, which has since raised $700.

"I love the lights," Rakowski told Patch. "I was sad to read they would be gone this year, and the swelling of community disappointment gave me the idea. If everyone wanted to help, it seemed like a modest contribution to organize the funds."

Rakowski set the GoFundMe goal at $5,000, but Brown said they would need to come up with at least $15,000 in the next two weeks for the lights to go up. Rakowski said she's been reaching out to the chamber daily with strategies to raise the money beyond the GoFundMe. But if the lights aren't hung, donors will be refunded, she said.

While Brown said she was happy to hear of such efforts to save the holiday lights, she remains skeptical of whether it could work.

"We'd want to have them up by Thanksgiving and there's not enough time left," she said. "I don't have the manpower to set that up."

Brown instead hopes to line the street with holiday banners along the storefronts, a less expensive alternative to the lights.

"I want to put up at least 15 banners to fill up the street," she said.

So far, she's sold about half that to local store and property owners at $250 a banner. But even if that doesn't work, Forest Hills residents still have the Celebrate Winter event to look forward to, Brown said.

That winter festival will be on Nov. 27 under a tent on 71st Road, between Austin Street and Queens Boulevard. Visitors can enjoy free entertainment, sample cuisine from local restaurants, take selfies with the Forest Hills reindeer and more.

Brown hopes the festival will help get residents into the holiday spirit, with or without the lights.

"I'm trying to look at it (the lights) as a blip for the holidays, not a disaster," she said. "Hopefully, when merchants see there's no lights this year, they'll be onboard for them in 2018."

Lead image via Patch Reporter Danielle Woodward.