Cookeville Looking into Adding Light Strands Downtown

Cookeville officials are looking into the possibility of adding light strands across streets in the city’s downtown area.

Economic Development Coordinator Melinda Keifer said the city is only discussing the possibility and nothing is set in stone.

“Some of the council had been in Chattanooga for a work session and they noticed Chattanooga has lights strung across the street,” Keifer said. “We’re trying to determine if that’s something we can do here in the west side area. We had our electric department guys go out and kind of look at it and see what is the cost factor.”

Keifer said one of the biggest challenges for Cookeville will be the size of the buildings. Areas in Chattanooga that use the light strands were three to five stories high, Keifer said, while Cookeville has much smaller buildings.

The topic was brought up during the city’s most recent work session last week. No word on if the light strand idea will be further discussed in the next work session on Oct. 8.