EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio — For Highland Hills, an elaborate Christmas display outside the fire station wasn’t in the budget this year. Then, village officials learned about an unusual opportunity.
Savant Systems Inc., the owner of GE Lighting, was giving away its vast collection of holiday decorations at Nela Park in East Cleveland. After a century of light shows, the business no longer had the manpower or money to keep the annual installations going.
So Savant downsized the Nela Park light show dramatically, to a selfie station and a replica of the National Christmas Tree, which GE Lighting sponsors each year. And the company opened up its huge warehouse to cities and nonprofits across the region, in hopes of keeping the spirit of the tradition alive – on a smaller scale, in new locations.
“With Nela Park helping us, it made the corner look very presentable and beautiful,” Adrienne Goodson, the senior services director for Highland Hills, said of the lawn outside the village's fire station at Harvard and Northfield roads. “People have been calling the mayor and calling us and telling us how beautiful that corner looks.”
Ben Sabol, the senior vice president of marketing and communications for Savant, knows this is a big change. He grew up going to see the holiday lights at Nela Park. His father worked for another division of General Electric, the conglomerate that owned GE Lighting until 2020.
“We all have these great memories of Nela Park,” Sabol said during an interview on Friday at the historic industrial property. “And those will never go away.”
But the expansive light shows, which required a full year of planning and installation, are a casualty of changes in technology, seismic shifts in the lighting industry – and time.
As part of Savant, a smart-home company with many remote workers, GE Lighting has roughly 70 employees at Nela Park. An out-of-state developer purchased the campus in 2022, with hopes of remaking it, but hasn't done much yet. GE Lighting is still a tenant, leasing a single building for its headquarters – with no intention of moving out.
The company marked a century of lights at Nela Park last December. At the time, Sabol told News 5 that GE Lighting hoped to keep the tradition going for another 100 years.
RELATED: 'So much history.' Nela Park celebrates 100 years of holiday lights in East Cleveland
But outsourcing the installation got expensive.
“When GE Lighting was part of the GE corporation, there were a lot more resources,” Sabol said Friday. “There was a lot more funding … a lot more people.”
And Debbie George, the consultant who has been designing the Nela Park displays for more than two decades, is retiring.
“I think we made the decision that we were going to need to do something smaller shortly after the 100th,” Sabol said. “And … we wanted to work quickly, because we didn’t just want to shut the lights off and lock up the displays so that no one would ever see them. … We came up with the idea to still have a presence here at the park, while also expanding our presence into Northeast Ohio.”
Now pieces of Nela Park history are spreading across the region – as far as Akron, Bentleyville and Chagrin Falls.
A cache of decorations is also destined for Santa’s Hide-A-Way Hollow in Middlefield, an invitation-only facility for terminally ill children and their families. Those decorations won’t be installed until the spring or early summer.
“It was a wonderful opportunity to see the facility and all Nela Park had stored from previous years,” Meagan Armington, the fundraising and sponsorship chair for the Chagrin Valley Jaycees, wrote in an email. “Quite impressive!”
The Jaycees put the donated decorations out at several buildings and in Riverside Park, where ornaments from past National Christmas Tree installations are now part of the local Festival of Trees event.
In East Cleveland, illuminated wreaths and a bow from Nela Park are hanging outside the Euclid Avenue entrance to City Hall. The city plans to display additional items soon.
And in nearby University Circle, Victorian figures and depictions of children playing in the snow greet passersby at the East Boulevard end of the Cleveland History Center. Inside, there’s a small exhibit about GE Lighting’s long history with the National Christmas Tree.
Angie Lowrie, the director of the Cleveland History Center, said the museum's staff plans to put out a larger Nela Park lighting display next year.
"While it will not be the full 'Nela Park experience' for those who remember," she wrote in an email, "we do hope it will evoke nostalgia and family tradition for generations to come."
Over in the Ohio City neighborhood, vintage decorations brighten up the sidewalks outside small businesses, a fire station, a library and a school. An illuminated fireplace and a procession of figures bring a bit of whimsy – and nostalgia – to Market Square Park.
Connor Dickey, who handles marketing for neighborhood group Ohio City Inc., was thrilled at the chance to visit the lighting warehouse at Nela Park. He expected to leave with just a few things, enough to decorate around the nonprofit’s offices on Lorain Avenue.
Instead, he ended up renting a 26-foot box truck and, with coworkers, spending three hours carefully filling it with one-of-a-kind decorations. The neighborhood group has produced a map of its Nela Park installations so people can take their own walking tours.
“This is obviously the pilot launch of this program,” Dickey said. “So next year, we’ll maybe restructure – and hopefully get a few more pieces to add to the collection.”
Sabol said the GE Lighting team is done with donations for the year. But there will be another window next year when communities and nonprofits can request items.
“I can tell you that we have not even donated half of our collection,” he said. “And so there is still a lot to go around.”
On Public Square in Downtown Cleveland, toy soldiers from Nela Park surround the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument. There are lanky candy canes and almost Seussian trees, dripping with icicles, from the GE Lighting archives.
Those decorations are just part of what Downtown Cleveland Inc. took home from Nela Park. The nonprofit installed other artifacts at Playhouse Square, Voinovich Park and North Coast Harbor.
Michael Deemer, the group’s president and CEO, said there are more decorations in storage, awaiting repairs so they can be used next year.
“I think what we’ve been able to do is bring some great old traditions into a new space, knowing that people are going to be able to enjoy them for years to come,” he said.
Other donations ended up at Lock 3 Park in Akron, Cleveland City Hall, and indoors at several facilities operated by the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio.
The city of Euclid took some decorations to incorporate into next year’s holiday displays.
And GE Lighting donated 1,700 pounds of broken strings of lights to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, for a recycling program that funds a lion and cheetah conservation initiative.
“The goal is to make sure that we’re spreading as much cheer as we possibly can,” Sabol said.
He knows many Northeast Ohio families have fond memories of walking or driving by the lights on Noble Road – or, years ago, traveling through the park to see the buildings all lit up. But fewer people have been coming to East Cleveland each year to view the show.
For now, Savant plans to keep a modest annual light installation going at Nela Park.
“We still have folks that are super loyal to the display,” Sabol said. “And that’s why we didn’t just want to go dark.”
But most of the decorations – from cupcakes to a giant boot covered in lights – will gradually make their way out into the world, becoming part of new traditions.
Sabol describes it as an evolution. But not an ending.
“There are a lot of different lighting displays these days that families can go to and experience,” he said. “And it feels great to be able to help them.”
