Port lighthouse in the spotlight

Port Washington’s iconic lighthouse will soon not only cast light as a navigational aid, it will also be lit up.

The plan, which was initiated a decade ago by Port Main Street Inc. as a way to turn the lighthouse into an attraction throughout the day and night, will be implemented by the city’s Street Department in the next six weeks, Commissioner J.D. Hoile said Tuesday.

“I think it’s going to look pretty cool,” Hoile said. “That’s the icon of the city. If you’re walking along the harbor or driving downtown and it’s lit up, I think it’s going to be awesome.”

Mayor Ted Neitzke concurred, saying, “I think that’s fantastic. Just think how good it’s going to look.”

But not everyone is a fan of the lighting plan. When it was announced at the Board of Public Works meeting Tuesday, Ald. Mike Gasper, a member of the board, sharply disagreed with the plan.

“I think this is a horrible idea,” he said. 

Gasper, a member of the Ozaukee County rescue boat crew, said it will make it more difficult to navigate, particularly during storms.

“Having a big, glowing lighthouse we’d be staring into ... is not going to be helpful,” he said. “Navigational structures are not meant to be lit.”

But Hoile noted that the lights are not meant to be seen from the lake, only from land, and they will be positioned to ensure that — something the Coast Guard insisted on before granting approval for the project.

The lighting project got its start in 2011, when Main Street’s design committee considered accent lighting of downtown buildings but shifted the focus to the lighthouse because of its importance in the city.

“It draws people to the lakefront, but it seems like after dusk it disappears. Our thought was to make it a showpiece for the downtown, to light it so after dusk you could still see it,” Mike Müller, a committee member, said at the time.

Hoile said Main Street bought a lighting kit that included the LED lights, cables, batteries and solar panels in 2015, and a couple years ago the project “kind of landed in our laps.”

Since spring, Hoile said, he has been working with Street Department employee Gary Fischer and Doug Schaefer, a lighting consultant who is a member of the Main Street Design Committee, to bring the project to fruition.

They have ordered fixtures to hold the lights in place on the lighthouse and expect to receive those in about a month, he said. They’ve also ordered new batteries for the lights. The total cost was about $1,300.

After the fixtures are completed, Hoile said they will work to properly position the lights and then turn them on.

Two sets of the LED lights will be mounted on the top railing of the lighthouse and direct light downward, with another light on the base of the structure to highlight the arches.

The lights will be powered by solar panels on the lighthouse, Hoile said, noting that they will be on for five or six hours with a full charge.

Schaefer, who noted that the city couldn’t mount the fixtures until it received ownership of the lighthouse, said the lights will illuminate the structure and the base.

“It should be a pretty dynamic thing,” he said. “It’s exciting after all these years to see it come to fruition.

“The most disappointing part is the fact the lighthouse has continued to degrade through the years,” he added. “I think from shore, it’s going to look white but when people traipse out there, then the rust will show.”

With luck, he said, that will spur efforts to restore the lighthouse.

Neitzke said he is working to put together a group to work with the Friends of the Lighthouse to raise funds to restore the lighthouse and to get current estimates of the cost.

When the city took ownership of the lighthouse several years ago, the cost of repairing the porthole windows was estimated at $30,000 and the cost of repainting the structure at as much as $1 million.

“Hopefully by fall we can get it fixed up and painted so it can truly represent the community,” Neitzke said.