New lights coming to brighten up Marion County high school football stadiums

File photo: Forest players run onto the field before their game against West Port during a football game at Forest High School in Ocala, Fla. on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2023.

Friday night lights are about to get much brighter, as the project to replace the lighting in every football stadium of Marion County’s public high schools is in motion.

The undertaking will cost over $2.2 million to install the new LED lights across the eight football stadiums. The Marion County School Board approved the project on June 25. Construction is intended to last 133 days and take place from 7 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.

“The football stadium lighting systems around the district consist of metal halide and metal sulfide lamps which cannot be purchased anymore and therefore cannot be maintained,” according to MCPS.

Each light fixture will be replaced at each pole with the LED light fixtures, new ballasts and drivers, according to MCPS.

“This will allow a quicker start on the lights once turned on, will produce more lumens thus making the field brighter, and will result in a much longer life span of the lamps,” according to MCPS.

This is only the beginning of the lighting projects to come, as the district also said it intends to make the same improvements to the lighting at each baseball and softball field. Funding has not yet been secured for those fields, so the lighting replacements will be completed in a separate phase.

The work will be done by Scorpio Corporation, the district’s annually contracted construction managers, according to MCPS.