A week after crews for the City of Duluth changed the Aerial Lift Bridge's lighting from high-pressure sodium lights to more energy-efficient LED lights, the decision was made to show off the new capabilities that came along with the change.

While city officials report the lighting project is "complete for now", with some additional work to be done at a later date, the work that was done does give city officials the ability to much more easily change the color of the lighting on one of Duluth's most iconic structures.

Previously, lighting changes meant shutting off the high-pressure sodium lights, and using temporary LED banks to illuminate the bridge with a different color (or colors) of lighting. We interviewed the people behind the 4th of July lighting change project, and captured some photos of what it took to make the light change. You can see that story here.

Now that the bridge is permanently illuminated by color-changing LED lights, the difficulty of changing the color of the bridge at night is much reduced. A similar project was completed on Enger Tower a few years ago.

In a press release, City of Duluth Energy Coordinator Alex Jackson said “We have waited a long time to upgrade the lights, and we hope to provide some joy for the community by lighting the Bridge purple for the foreseeable future.”

They also noted in a Facebook post that the decision to change the color of the lighting in "Minnesota Purple" is "an effort to bring joy to our community." They go on to say "We know things aren’t easy right now Duluth, but we’ll get through this together one light at a time."

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So, while we reported that the bluish-white would be the "new normal" just a week ago, it looks like we can get used to purple for at least awhile.

One other thing of note on a longer-term scale: While the ability to change the color of the bridge lighting is now a pretty easy process, city officials say they are not taking requests for lighting color changes from the public at this time.

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