Massive drive-thru Christmas light display leaves Macon Chick-fil-A for new home
One of the Macon area’s most prominent Christmas-light displays is moving to the edge of Mercer University’s campus.
During each holiday season for the past dozen years, the elaborate, synchronized light show has turned the Chick-fil-A on Tom Hill Sr. Boulevard into a yuletide beacon.
The new location will include a canopy of some 46,000 lights spanning Montpelier Avenue between loft apartments at Mercer Village.
Set to officially open on Thanksgiving night and run through early January, the display also features a 30,000-light archway over a sidewalk near Mercer’s bookstore. Visitors may recall the archway, which was used as a tunnel of dancing lights over the Chick-fil-A drive-thru lane.
“We’ll be close to 100,000 (lights) when it’s done,” said Chuck Hammock, a mechanical engineer and volunteer who oversees the display, which raises money for Macon Area Habitat for Humanity.
The eye-popping array had to be moved this year because the Chick-fil-A on Tom Hill Sr. will soon be demolished and rebuilt. There isn’t time to take down the holiday lights before construction begins.
Of erecting what has become one of Macon’s most-visited holiday attractions, Hammock said, “I always liked Christmas lights. Then when I found out there were these animated Christmas lights, that got me interested ... I’m an engineer but yet I still have a little bit of an imagination.”
In all, there will be more than a mile of light strands.
The current plan is for the display to be set up at Mercer for four years.
In coming seasons, Hammock said, the setup may stretch down the road that runs along the western edge of campus past the Hilton Garden Inn to the football stadium, ringing in lights some 100 oak trees along the way.