ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – St. Augustine city leaders considered a proposal to shorten the wildly popular annual Nights of Lights festival because of growing concerns over traffic congestion.
The event brings tens of thousands to St. Augustine during the holiday season, but those visitors also bring some holiday chaos when it comes to getting around the city.
At the end of last year’s Nights of Lights celebration, residents poured out their concerns to city officials about the large crowds and hectic traffic coming from the event that typically runs from early to mid November until late January.
Vice Mayor Barbara Blonder suggested temporarily scaling back the event by 20 days as a solution.
That would have the 2025 Nights of Lights running from Saturday, Nov. 22, through Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026.
On Monday, city commissioners decided in a 3 to 2 vote on a compromise to shorten the event to 57 days instead of the regular 65, cutting the event by eight days.
The dates for the 2025 Nights of Lights would be from November 15 to January 11. This temporary reduction will only last for one year.
Dozens of residents came forward at the meeting to share their thoughts about cutting the event, including Nights of Lights founder Len Weeks.
“I know there’s going to be some hoteliers that really are upset that it didn’t go through Martin Luther King Day, the 20th of January. That’s going to hurt them in January, but again, hopefully they can make up for it in November,” Weeks said.
Multiple residents were in favor of shortening the event. But business owners like Irving Kass owner of the St. George Inn and chairman of the Tourism Development Council, shared their concerns about losing out on potential income if Nights of Lights were to be cut off in early January.
“Nights of lights is extremely important for our whole destination,” said Kass. “I’ve got 24 employees who rely on Nights of Lights, and it’s just a really important event to help the whole community.”
When previously discussing the proposal with city commissioners, Blonder said she talked with a resident who told her she could not leave her home for two hours because an event attendee parked their car and blocked her from leaving. She had to have the car towed and when the attendee returned to find their car gone, an argument ensued.
She proposed the temporary change to give the city more time to find a permanent solution moving forward. The city has a consultant who specializes in large events to help figure out the future of Nights of Lights.
Blonder said she is sensitive to the concerns of business owners who enjoy a holiday boost from the visitors, but she said they need to find a compromise that works for everyone because the way it is now isn’t working.
“For this past year, $325,000 it took us to just keep the streets clean and the garbage picked up during nights of lights alone,” Blonder noted. “That balance has to be made, and maybe the business community will help us defray those costs and help us with the staffing that we need for crowd management.”
Blonder hoped that by shortening Nights of Lights for at least this year it can help get a handle on things.
“The King Street Bridge reconstruction that’s happening starting next summer will make traffic very difficult,” she said. “Adding Nights of Lights visitors to that is one of the reasons I want to temporarily tap on the brakes and try at least this one stopgap measure for this year.”
At one point during commission there was discussion about potentially having Nights of Lights run through Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which Kass would have preferred. Even though the vote didn’t go the way he would have hoped, he’s still looking forward to the future.
“We’ll work with them, and the more important thing is improving the mobility and moving quickly, taking some of the best practices we’ve learned from like our friends at the Players Championship,” said Kass.
Weeks feels the event doesn’t need to be shorter, it just needs to be managed better.
“We have a great opportunity here, because people want to come to St. Augustine, we just have to manage it differently than we’ve done in the past,” said Weeks. “It’s outgrown what we can do, doing things the same old, same old. So we got to come up with some new ways to do it.”
City Commission will spend the months leading up to this years Nights of Lights trying to figure out safety and accessibility.