Local Company Makes Holidays Shine Brighter In Millennium Park

CHICAGO RIDGE, IL — Since downtown Chicago was transformed into a festive winter wonderland after Thanksgiving, millions of visitors have strolled down Michigan Avenue and traipsed through Millennium Park to gaze upon the millions of twinkling lights.

If you’re wondering, “how do they do that,” it's thanks to a Chicago Ridge company selected for the prestigious job of lighting the City of Chicago’s 108th official Christmas tree in Millennium Park, along with the trees along Michigan Avenue. M.T. Kelley president Vince Kelly, the founder’s son, was delighted to help light up the holidays in Chicago this year.

“We’re really excited to not only be doing the main tree, but the rest of the lighting around Millennium Park,” Kelly said. “To be able to give families a bright spot and hope that times are going to start to get better, that’s really important to us and one of the reasons we wanted to be involved.”

Together with Powering Chicago, and support from the Electrical Contractors’ Association of Chicago and IBEW 134, the Chicago Ridge electrical company strung almost 10-and-a-half miles of lighting, with a crew of six, using five lifts to finish the job within hours of the lighting ceremony, which was open to the public after being held virtually last year.

On the main tree in Millennium Park, the M.T. Kelly experts strung 1,000 strands of lights (53,500 individual lights) which equals 25,750 feet of lighting. That’s 4.8 miles of lights on the main tree. On the additional trees, a total of 1,160 strands were strung, for another 29,000 feet.

“It was definitely a time crunch,” Kelly said. “This year it was tough and go to get the lights with all the shipping issues. We had a late start and had to work some long hours.”

Kelly said as six people were stringing lights on trees and the Christmas Tree in Millennium Park, someone was in the office taking lights out of boxes and putting them on spools.

“We ran non-stop,” he said.

The Millennium Park tree includes 575 strands of multicolored lights going up and down and woven in the tree. In addition, there are 75 strands of pink lights, wrapped and tied together. The last thing to go on was 375 strands of the larger C7-type lights on the outside of the tree.
Each tree on Michigan Avenue is also getting 20 sets of warm white mini-LED Christmas lights. Electricians are wrapping the large branches in Christmas lights too.

M.T. Kelly Electric LLC, 9845 Rutherford Ave., has been around since 1994, specializing in commercial and industrial lighting. Affiliated with International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 134, M.T. Kelly offers such services as indoor lighting maintenance, lighting upgrades and retrofits, fire alarm installation, and commercial electrical systems. During the winter months, the company employs 6 to 10 electricians, and 30 to 50 employees in the summer.

Some M.T. Kelly projects have including installing 24-foot diameter fans in the American Airlines hanger, the installation of new EV charging stations at Coco Cola, and installing upgrades at numerous facilities to make them more energy efficient.

“This definitely was the most public job we’ve performed,” Kelly said. “We had crowds standing around all day watching us.”

How pleased was he with the finished result?

"It was great being part of it. I took my wife and children down to see the tree light up and the big crowd,” Kelly said. “Even though it was long hours and stressful getting it done, we all had a really good time.”