Pittsburgh, PA — Forum, Inc., a Pittsburgh-based lighting fixture manufacturer, collaborated with several local groups to design, engineer and manufacture custom lighting for the Roberto Clemente Bridge. The Clemente Bridge, formerly known as the Sixth Street Bridge, had its official lighting November 21, 2002. The bridge lights and a spectacular fireworks display illuminated the night sky and Allegheny River on the eve of Pittsburgh’s annual Light Up Night.

Duquesne Light, who provided funding to devise and install the wiring and lighting fixtures for the Clemente Bridge — including a $50,000 endowment to maintain the fixtures and defray the electricity costs — has been working with Forum and local groups to light other Pittsburgh bridges.

Forum Senior Vice President Paula Garret considers the 18-month Clemente Bridge project “a real feather in the cap of Pittsburgh’s lighting community.”

“That such a prominent landmark bears the work of one of the city’s own lighting companies, we at Forum are pleased to collaborate with civic groups on a local level and to engineer and manufacture the high-technology LED lighting that we’ve used for projects throughout the country,” Garret said. “Bridges and light move and connect people … it was our vision to do just that in Pittsburgh with our lighting technology — to move and connect people.”

Spanning the Allegheny River between Downtown and the North Shore, the Clemente Bridge lighting design needed to be at once functional while preserving the historical integrity of the original structure. Forum developed an architectural lighting design that works in line with the bridge’s historic past, conforms to the group’s vision to illuminate the bridge in a tasteful way and creates a standard for future bridge lighting collaborations. Custom housing for the 74 LED lighting fixtures provides 100,000 hours of output, a strategic decision made for optimal functionality.

“We needed to set a precedence with this project, and we wanted to show Pittsburgh what we can do and how we do it at Forum Lighting,” Garret said.

Forum was a natural choice for the Clemente Bridge project, given its vast experience working with state-of-the-art LED lighting. In addition, Forum completed Amtrak’s high-speed rail platform lighting for the northeast corridor, and is one of the few manufacturers locally working with the high-performance, high-quality LED light source.

Forum, Inc., is an independently owned and operated lighting fixture manufacturer. Founded in 1963, Forum’s staff of engineers, lighting fixture designers and application engineers have designed, engineered and manufactured lighting solutions for clients locally and nationwide.