Columbus Clippers Light Up Huntington Park for 43 Nights of Holiday Displays

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Huntington Park trades baseballs for bulbs starting Saturday, Nov. 14, when the Columbus Clippers open their first-ever Holiday Lights event, a walk-through display of more than 1 million lights and immersive installations that will take over the Arena District ballpark for 43 nights, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

The event runs Nov. 14 through Dec. 31, with hours of 6 to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays and 5:30 to 9 p.m. Fridays through Sundays, The Columbus Dispatch reported. It will be closed on all Mondays in November, on Thanksgiving Day and on Christmas Day. Tickets cost $12 in advance and $13 on the day of the event through the Clippers’ website.

For the Clippers, the display is a new winter use for a ballpark that normally goes quiet after the Triple-A season ends in the fall. Huntington Park, at the corner of Neil Avenue and Nationwide Boulevard, has been the Clippers’ home since it opened on April 18, 2009, and seats 10,100 fans as the Triple-A affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians.

The park was a $70 million project designed by 360 Architecture and developed by Nationwide Realty Investors, and it was named Ballpark of the Year by Baseballparks.com in August 2009, ahead of new major-league stadiums that opened the same year. Beyond Clippers games, it has hosted the Big Ten baseball tournament, the OHSAA state baseball championships, the Triple-A All-Star Game and concerts.

The Holiday Lights event adds the park to a fast-growing Ohio trend: ballparks as off-season holiday destinations. In Dayton, the Dragons opened Deck the Diamond at Day Air Ballpark on Nov. 13 with more than 1.5 million lights of its own — NewsForce247 covered that opening in Deck the Diamond Opens Tonight With 1.5 Million Lights at Day Air Ballpark.

Columbus is leaning into the season elsewhere, too. The Columbus Foundation’s Center for HumanKindness is stretching World Kindness Day into a five-day Celebrate Kindness campaign Nov. 13–17, with free meals, a community swag closet and seven surprise grants to school-serving organizations — the subject of NewsForce247’s Columbus Stretches World Kindness Day Into Five Days of Meals, Grants and Giving.

The timing gives Arena District visitors a full evening in one neighborhood: the ballpark sits steps from Nationwide Arena and Lower.com Field, in a district built on the former Ohio Penitentiary site. The Clippers’ Left Field Building, with its patios overlooking the field, and the rooftop AEP Power Pavilion give the light display ready-made viewpoints that a purpose-built holiday venue would have to construct.

What visitors will actually walk through, according to The Columbus Dispatch, is a full-park route of walk-through light displays rather than a drive-through show — guests move through the displays on foot inside the stadium. The Dispatch’s listing points readers to the Clippers’ Holiday Lights page at milb.com/columbus/ballpark/holiday-lights for the full calendar of operating nights.

What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: The dates, hours, closure days and ticket prices above are confirmed in The Columbus Dispatch’s report. The Clippers have not, in that report, detailed every individual display, character appearance or concession offering for each night, and operating plans for individual nights can change with the weather — the team’s event page is the place to confirm a specific date before going.

Advance tickets at $12 are the cheaper option, and with 43 operating nights spread across seven weeks, weekday evenings in early December are likely to be the least crowded window for families who want the full route without weekend lines, though the team has not published attendance expectations.

What happens next is simple: the gates open Saturday, Nov. 14, at 5:30 p.m. for the first weekend night of the run. The display then operates on its published schedule through New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, closing out Huntington Park’s first holiday season under the lights.

Photo: DrBob317, CC BY-SA 2.0