They come by the thousands to see Frosty the Snowman, a 90-foot tree draped in decorative lighting and what is believed to be the world’s longest tunnel made of twinkling light bulbs.
The Soddy-Daisy Christmas lights show, produced by NoogaLights, has become one of the top holiday attractions in the area, right up there with the Enchanted Garden of Lights at Rock City.
John Haustein, the 49-year-old owner of the NoogaLights company, never grows tired of watching people do U-turns on Highway 27 to visit the drive-through Christmas light attraction, which is situated on a peninsula that juts into Soddy Lake.
He has even tried to get the light tunnel certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s longest, but negotiations were stalled on a technicality, he says.
He estimates that last year, 50% of the people who paid $20 per carload to enter the light show were impulse customers who were coaxed off the highway by the illuminated wonderland. People come by the truckloads — $20 covers everybody you can fit in the bed. There are also patrons who make the loop alone with their dogs, and the dogs seem to be mesmerized by the lights. Once inside, you can circle around as many times as you please.
Haustein’s company — which started as a window-washing and bridge-cleaning enterprise — has slowly morphed into a residential and municipal Christmas lights specialty business.
For the last two years, his Soddy-Daisy-based light show has been the crown jewel of his operation. Before that, he staged a show at Chester Frost Park, also in Hamilton County.
Meanwhile, his crew is in high demand around the country, having done lighting jobs in places such as Nashville; Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; and Austin, Texas.
Last year, about 38,000 people visited the Soddy-Daisy light show, which includes some 400,000 lights that become pixels in a multi-colored light tapestry.
Christmas light designers in Chattanooga are making light of the season
About 20% of the company’s business involves installing Christmas lights on residences, Haustein says. Customers pay an average of about $1,500 to lease holiday lights for the season, he explains.
Momentum for permanent home lighting products has also picked up, as products now include lights that change color and/or serve as residential accent lighting year-round.
“The homeowner doesn’t own anything,” Haustein says of his business model. “We buy it, install it and take care of it if it breaks. We tear it down. They don’t have to worry about anything.”
He purposely keeps the volume low on residential light jobs because he needs most of his workers during the holiday season to work on the Soddy-Daisy show. It can take several hundred hours just to program the music to the dancing lights, he says.
All of the light packages his company installed were up by Halloween, he explains. But the lights aren’t turned on until around Thanksgiving.
“I want to do a good job,” he says. “I don’t want to overpromise and have 100 people waiting on me to do their lights.”
Haustein’s crew also specializes in commercial lighting. He has recently done a cluster of permanent light jobs at EPB, Miller Park and the old Chattanooga Times Building.
He thinks lighting groups like this might be a harbinger of a trend to come. There are even murmurs about reviving the downtown holiday lights that once topped many of the tall buildings in the city, he says.
Meanwhile, at Holder Outdoors, a local landscaping company that does holiday light installations in the late fall, business was beginning to peak in early November.
Jeff Gochoel, an employee at Holder Outdoor Services — which is owned by Dakota Holder — says that installation packages, using leased lights, can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars.
“It depends on if it’s a single story or two stories,” he says. “And whether it’s just a simple strip vs. wrapping columns. [The price] can vary greatly.”
NoogaLights is located at 12000 Dayton Pike. Learn more on their Facebook page or at noogalights.com. Find Holder Outdoor Services at holderoutdoor.com.