The latest lights to be installed in downtown Brownsville now require upgrades.
Nine months after the downtown district’s traditional globe lights and poles were removed and replaced, a number of the new lights have dented shades. The problem was the newer lights weren’t high enough to avoid being damaged by delivery trucks parking along the side of the roads.
On Tuesday, the Brownsville City Commission voted in favor spending $99,635 for the purchase of extensions that will be added to the light poles.
According to the Engineering Department: “The existing height clearance is not adequate for commercial trucks. The installation team noted the clearance height issue after the first batch of light poles had been installed and commercial trucks began damaging them.
“The intent of this purchase is to, I call it a candy cane arm, that would raise the structure by three feet giving us clearance above the typical truck height of 13 and one half feet,” said Armando Gutierrez Jr., director of engineering for the city’s engineering at Tuesday’s meeting.
Gutierrez said the first delivery of 40 new arms would take six to eight weeks, and every two weeks after the city would continue to receive deliveries of the new arms.
The Street Lighting Beautification Project that initiated the change of light poles was funded by the Musk Foundation, which in June 2021 announced it would be donating $10 million for the revitalization of downtown Brownsville.
The project is an initiative between the City of Brownsville and Brownsville Public Utilities Board.
In an earlier interview, Brownsville Mayor Trey Mendez said Musk wants downtown to be more of a magnet for the kind of people he needs for SpaceX’s Starship moon and Mars rocket development program at the company’s Boca Chica production complex and launch site, a little over 20 miles east of Brownsville.
“They want to continue to see downtown become a destination,” Mendez said. “They want to see it being something that will help them attract personnel to their company. You want arts and culture. You want destinations. You want something for people to want to come to.”
City officials said the reason the old light poles were being replaced is because they were deteriorating and nearing their useful life “leading to the city identifying the Street Lighting Beautification Project as a high-need area of improvement to provide better accent lighting for pedestrian traffic in the evening.”
The new lights are similar to those in use in Market Square, and officials said the lights are complimentary to the renovations taking place in the area.
In total, the lights cost $855,450 with each light pole costing about $5,122.46.
