Madison County Parks & Rec installs new light display at courthouse

JACKSON, Tenn. — The Madison County Parks and Recreation Department is gearing up for the holiday season.

The new parks director, Matthew Martin, wants to start a new tradition in the county. This being the first year, Martin wanted to give a little insight on his vision for this program.

“Well, we’re bringing Christmas lights back to Madison County, the Jackson area,” Martin said. “As you can see, we’ve got brand new lights that we are setting up around the courthouse square. This is going to be a teaser. Everything will move to Bourne Park next year, when we have more lights and more variety. But for now, we are trying to show everybody what we can do and just a teaser of what’s going to be going on next year.”

While this is a new program for Madison County, it is not new for Martin. Coming from western Kentucky, he was able to do this same program, and made it very successful.

“Well, when I was in Murray, Kentucky, we started with 13 residential, basically Home Depot-type displays, I turned it into 160 displays within three years,” said Martin. “We kinda lit up the town like Clark Griswold did with his house. That’s what I want to see out at Bourne Park.”

In order for this to grow, sponsors are needed. Martin says that you can sponsor some lights, and your logo will be presented in front of the display. He also talked about his plans for next year’s event.

“Every penny that we make from our lights, will go back into more lights,” Martin said. “Now what we’re going to do next year at Bourne, we’ll have a little Santa house set up, I’m going to invite a charity in to raise money for their charity, and we’ll also take donations for canned goods for like the local homeless shelters and things like that. So, it’s going to be a win-win for the whole community when it’s up and running.”

If you want to see the display that the county put up Tuesday morning, you can head to the Madison County courthouse to see them all.

If you would like to be a sponsor for this program, you can contact the Madison County Parks and Recreation Department for more information.

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