In the decade since they were built, the 25,000 LED lights illuminating the west side of the Bay Bridge have taken a brutal pounding.
“It’s the salt air, the wind, the fog, the rain, the 24/7 vibrations on the bridge, the lightning, the debris and the grime from the cars – and so much more,” said Ben Davis, founder of the San Francisco nonprofit behind the light installation. which increased in 2013.
With the lights deteriorating faster than they could be repaired, Davis called for them to be turned off in 2023, leaving what he calls “a hole in the night sky” for last year.
To restore the lights, Davis launched a campaign to raise $11 million without city or corporate funding. With $10.5 million now raised, he said, the 1.8-mile piece of public art will return early next year, with longer-lasting lights, and twice as many.
“We’re really in great shape,” he said, and news of the rekindling sent “a shiver of excitement” through San Francisco.
The public art installation, called “The Bay Lights” and designed by New York artist Leo Villareal, originally relied on “off-the-shelf” LEDs because they were the best available, Davis said .
After about eight years, they were noticeably suffering, with sections teetering and dying along the bridge that connects San Francisco to Oakland.
In the decade since they were built, the 25,000 LED lights illuminating the west side of the Bay Bridge have taken a brutal pounding. The Bay Bridge must be turned back on, with twice as many lights.
(Courtesy of Illuminate)
“We had no way of tracking the failure rate,” said Davis, founder of the public art nonprofit Illuminate. “It was throwing money down a hole.” Turning off the lights last year “was a difficult choice.”
He said more than 1,200 people have donated to the rekindling effort, including five giving $1 million gifts.
The nearly 50,000 new, stronger fixtures are custom designed and manufactured by Musco Lighting in Iowa.
San Francisco restaurateur Pete Sittnick has organized fundraisers to bring back the lights. From the windows, decks and patios of its two restaurants, EPIC Steak and Waterbar on the Embarcadero, guests have marveled at the lights above the water for a decade.
“It was inspiring to see the joy it brought to the guests, everyone was taking pictures, taking videos,” Sittnick said. “You could sit and watch it for an hour and it would still be different patterns.
“What we get now is, ‘What happened to the lights?’ People remember them, they see them in photos. “Why did they go out and come back? are really the two biggest questions we get asked. And thank goodness we can now tell them they’re coming back.
With his unparalleled view of the bridge’s lights, Sittnick came to view himself as their unofficial steward. When he saw lights flickering or going out, he alerted Davis, who in turn alerted the engineers.
At first it was infrequent, Sittnick said, but after a decade he did it about every month. “For those of us who knew about (the installation), we could say, hey, this is starting to fail.”
Bad press has beset San Francisco in recent years, often on themes of crime and homelessness. But “the Bay Lights are something that can bring a sense of hope,” Sittnick said.
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