Civic Pride Committee Announces Holiday Lighting Winners

Members of the city’s Civic Pride Committee have chosen the winners of the Holiday Outdoor Decorating Contest and in their judging they said they looked for those who put special effort into it.

This was the 30th annual contest and there were three categories–Residential, Commercial and Youth (under 16). Certificates were presented to the winners during the City Council meeting on Dec. 18.

Carrie Stewart Nolan won first place in the Residential category. Her front yard, from 246 S. Sparks St., to around the corner on Oak Street, is filled with different scenes. A family of penguins holds up holiday greetings written in Spanish, Santa rides piggyback on a polar bear, and old St. Nick readies for take-off aboard a hot air balloon. Christmas carols playing through a music system make the visuals even more festive.

“We just enjoy doing it and the neighbors and people come by every day and thank us for putting it up,” Stewart Nolan said. “While we were doing it, they were like ‘Oh I am so excited. What are you going to do over here?’ They are just so joyous about it.”

Many of the decorations were purchased, but some scenes have incorporated items found around the house, Stewart Nolan said. A patio umbrella is open over a table stacked with gifts. A garden swing is filled with plush toys and Santas. A few feet away Santa poses in an old jalopy that her husband, Nicholas Nolan, uses when he decorates for Halloween.

“I want to move to adding more things that we just create instead of stuff we buy,” Stewart Nolan said.

Next year her husband wants to build a roller coaster that takes up the whole yard, she said.

Winning the Commercial category was The Tower Burbank at 3900 W. Alameda Ave. Property Manager Greg Pineda leaves creative design up to Charlotte Carpenter Lewis, assistant property manager. The building staff –engineers Jim McNamara, Dario Valle, Richard Riddle and Luis Rodelo and day porters Lilliana Herrera and Agustin Sanchez– install her ideas.

“I couldn’t do it without them!” Carpenter Lewis said.

They came up with a way to attach decorations onto a building that is mostly concrete and glass, she added. The lobby is granite so they not only had to attach the wall hangings to that material but place them in a way so as not to compromise the building systems.

Outside the building, the glass doors are framed with wreathes and garland. On the corner of Kenwood Street and Alameda, a 10-foot-tall toy soldier she calls Captain Christmas stands at attention. There are snowflakes behind him.

In the lobby, there is a 12-foot tree and flying reindeer flank the doors. An 8-foot-tall Poinsettia tree stands in the parking elevator lobby, she said.

The public can come into the building during business hours, she said.

Shane Roadnight, 10, won the Youth category with his entry titled “Simply Joyous” at 923 W. Angeleno Ave. It was the first time he submitted an application, he said,

“I’ve been wanting to enter and now that I finally did and won, it’s cool!” he said.

Several items in the display are handmade, like a wall hanging he made at church and paper cut-outs of Santa and a gingerbread man and woman he decorated with stickers at the city’s Breakfast with Santa. A brown teddy bear sits in a box decorated to look like a sleigh. The front bush is illuminated by a $6 string of lights, a gift from an anonymous donor.

“You don’t have to have a lot of money and you can still participate, you can still make it and you can just help bring joy and make things better,” said his mom Shannon Douglas.

In the past few years, the number of entries to the contest has declined, Vincent said. The committee used to receive about 100 entries, but this year they got only 26.

“I am really disappointed more businesses don’t enter,” he said. “The Holiday Inn has won several years, but they have a budget.”