Roanoke’s famed neon star may not be neon forever, though it wasn’t neon to begin with.
Faced with trying to maintain the 2,000 feet of neon tubing and wiring with a dwindling number of parts and qualified professionals to do it, city officials have begun exploring future options for keeping the star lit.
“There’s no decision, it’s just information gathering at this point,” City Councilman John Garland said.
Garland, who makes his living restoring historic buildings, inquired to city staff about the future of the Mill Mountain Star after a Roanoke man, Darryl Thompson, who describes himself as “the last neon lighting professional working in Western Virginia,” asked him to.
According to a Facebook post by Thompson, he heard through industry contacts that the city is soliciting bids to replace the neon lighting on the star with LED lights.
“If this happens, it will look like crap and jeopardize it’s [sic] historical standing,” Thompson wrote. “If any further movement happens with this WE as a city need to stand against it.”
Acting City Manager Sherman Stovall said Friday that “no such solicitation is on the street” to convert the star to LED lighting.
“Neon is getting harder for them to have options to maintain all of that. There’s just so few people that do it,” Garland said Friday afternoon.
He said city staff is “really just kind of reviewing options of what might be the possibility just to see whether one would make sense over the other, for long-term maintenance, energy, that sort of thing.”
The star, erected as a temporary Christmas display atop Mill Mountain in 1949 by the Roanoke Merchants Association and the Chamber of Commerce, was instantly so popular that it was retained as a permanent display and soon became the symbol of what has become known as the Star City.
At 88.5 feet high, it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Thompson, who said he’d be willing to help offset the cost of repairs to keep the neon lighting in place, believes removing the neon would imperil its status on the National Register, but according to the form approving its historic status, it wasn’t a neon star to begin with.
“Originally, lighted with light bulbs, the Coming Glass Works later manufactured two thousand feet of neon tubing,” the form reads, attributing that information to a 1997 Roanoke Times story.
The star’s historic status is justified, according to the form, by its place as a symbol of the city’s prosperity and for its “engineering as the largest man-made illuminated star.” The method of lighting is not mentioned in the justification.
[Bob Kinsey, 92, who helped build the star with his family's Roy C. Kinsey Sign Co., said later that the only lighting on the star from its construction was neon, an assertion backed up by a Nov. 20, 1949, Roanoke Times story.]
The star has been renovated four times, in 1971, 1979, 1987 and in 1997, when the city spent $60,000 to replace all 2,000 feet of the neon tubing and wiring and repaint the structure.
“The Roanoke Star stands in excellent condition,” the National Register form states.
Aware of the star’s beloved status, Garland asked Stovall to keep council apprised of the situation. “Because if they did anything that went further than [gathering information],” he said, “it would get pretty controversial.”
