Mayor’s Tree Lighting rescheduled to Sunday

Mayor Jeff Longwell was planning on skipping a dinner Thursday in Topeka to attend his annual Mayor’s Tree Lighting event, according to the city, but now the plans have changed.

The Mayor’s Tree Lighting, complete with fireworks and a visit from Santa, has been moved to this Sunday evening, to be held in conjunction with the Lights on the River event.

The scheduled A Night With Santa event, put on by Wichita Park and Recreation, will go on as originally planned, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thursday inside Century II’s Expo and Convention Halls.

The change of plans was “kind of last-minute,” said Megan Lovely, communications and special events manager with the city. Traditionally, the Mayor’s Tree Lighting and A Night With Santa have been held back-to-back.

Longwell, who will be at a League of Kansas Municipalities Board of Directors meeting Thursday, said combining the tree-lighting ceremony with Lights on the River “works well.”

“They’ve been trying to build that up for quite some time, so it’s kind of a nice feature where we include all of the lighting ceremonies in the same evening,” Longwell said.

After the tree-lighting ceremony on Kennedy Plaza, which starts around 5 p.m. Sunday, trolleys will shuttle attendees to the Lights on the River event, near the Wichita Boathouse.

Lights on the River, an event put on by Wichita Clean Streams, had planned to launch fireworks Sunday night. The fireworks the city typically launches for the Mayor’s Tree Lighting event will now be combined with those at Lights on the River.

This story was originally published December 2, 2016 at 9:48 AM with the headline "Mayor’s Tree Lighting rescheduled to Sunday."