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SunTrust Building In Tampa Expands Color Palette

Tribune file photo by JAY NOLAN (2007)

The SunTrust building in downtown Tampa changed its lights to green and gold to honor the University of South Florida Bulls before a big game last year.

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By RICH SHOPES | The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 12, 2008

TAMPA - The city skyline will get a new look starting next week.

The owners of the SunTrust building downtown have hired a theatrical lighting company to install outdoor lights to allow for more color choices: red and green for Christmas, pink for breast cancer awareness, green for St. Patrick's Day, and so on.

"You could cycle through eight different shades of green," lighting designer Chris Jones of Bay Stage Lighting in Tampa said this morning.

The current system uses 8-foot-long fluorescent tubes to illuminate the top of the building. Workers can change colors but have fewer options and have to go outside the building and make the changes by hand using colored gels.

The new system uses light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, that draw a quarter of the electricity of fluorescent tubes, and the colors can be switched with a few computer keystrokes from inside the building.

LEDs last at least 18 years compared to fluorescent lights' seven- or eight-year lifespan.

It's not all good news, though. LEDs cost more upfront. They pay for themselves in energy savings after about eight years, Jones said.

Jones wouldn't say what the building's owners, Stiles Corp. and Macquarie Office Trust, are paying for the system, which is scheduled for testing Tuesday night.

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633.

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