by Greg Cook, Essex County Initiative
We’re looking for new ways, creative ways to get people to come downtown, to get people to come together,” Vilma Martinez-Dominguez, Community Development Director for the City of Lawrence, told a crowd gathered at Lawrence’s Pemberton Park on the evening of June 5.
The 200 or so people had gathered for the “soft launch” of Iluminación Lawrence, a public and private partnership that will light up several structures around the city with colorful LEDs and projections. It aims to celebrate the city, mark the economic growth of the community and spark more.
At dusk that evening, after speeches by community leaders and drumming by the Lawrence High School Blueline (they concluded with drumsticks that lit up with color), people made their way to the edge of the Merrimack River to see the debut of the lights on the Casey Bridge and, downstream, the face of the Ayer Mill Clock Tower. The five piers of the bridge lit up, orange and purple and pink and blue and green, reflecting in the water flowing underneath.
“This will be the light,” Evan Silverio, chair of the Lawrence Redevelopment Authority, told the crowd, “that will keep our momentum going.”