Lee — There is a new glow downtown. The town is in the final steps of completing a new technology rollout that refurbishes its downtown decorative streetlights with energy-efficient LED lighting for better visibility on roads and crosswalks.
Courtesy of a $250,800 Massachusetts Rural Development Fund Grant and an additional $79,500 appropriated by the town of Lee as matching funds, the project also added three outdoor Wi-Fi access points to Main Street’s southern end for public use, Town Administrator Christopher Brittain stated in an email response to The Berkshire Edge. Those points stretch from roughly the Lee Town Park to St. Mary’s Church at 140 Main Street, he said, with the municipality previously lacking those points and hindering cell phone service.
Other pluses from the update allow for future extensions including digital signage, emergency buttons, and environmental sensors. “Not only do the new fixtures look much better but the new light patterns make Main Street much safer for pedestrians at night,” stated Brittain in a November 25 news release. “The Wi-Fi should be a huge benefit to restaurants and merchants on Main Street that sometimes struggle with poor cellular service.”
Audio features are also part of the project package, with the December 6 “Holiday Stroll” serving as the first opportunity to try out the new program.
Although all of the project hardware is in place, Brittain stated some software programming is needed “before everything is fully functional.”
