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Community Corner

Balboa Island Home Shines for Christmas

The Zimmerman house on Sapphire Avenue is adorned with 22,000 lights and a multitude of decorations. The display will stay up through the end of the year.

It was a dark week at the Zimmerman house.

Normally, the house on Balboa Island at 327 Sapphire Ave. would have been gleaming with a spectacular show with thousands of lights and music—a holiday tradition in Newport Beach that has been featured on HGTV and the Today show.

But with all the wet weather, it was lights out. 

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And then Thursday came—a dry night, at last—and the Zimmerman house finally shone.

"The amount of effort that he had to put into this ... this is unreal," said an awestruck Matt Hughes, who is on vacation from from Mississippi.

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People from all over the world have stopped in to see the Zimmerman house over the years: Israel, Sweden, South Africa and Ecuador, among others. Most seasons, upward of 16,000 people visit the Zimmerman house. The Zimmermans even get Christmas cards from fans. A girl from Japan sent a card reading: "Say hello to decoration daddy."

Jennifer Markas, visiting from New York, has come to see the Zimmerman house each season for the last 10 years.

"I am very impressed that he can bring the community together during the holiday season, making it more festive," she said.

Greg Zimmerman, who has lived on Balboa Island with wife Loretta for 20 years, began decorating the outside of his house for Christmas a decade ago.

"I figured my wife does the inside, let's do some fun things on the outside," Greg said.

Greg started small. He noticed that people would come by and look at the house for about 30 seconds before going on their way. The second year, he added more. People began spending more time looking at the decorations. Greg figured he was onto something, so he took a trip to Disneyland to do some research. 

"What is it that Disney does that makes people enjoy it and makes people want to come back? So I applied those same concepts and the next year we went big," Greg said. 

And big he went, filling the front of his house with a host of characters and motifs inspired not only by Disneyland but also by his own travels to Norway, Germany and Russia.

Now the display is up to 22,000 lights, along with a multitude of decorations—and a $1,000 electricity bill for December (the Zimmermans say they use electricity conservatively throughout the rest of the year). Greg plans the display throughout the year and begins decorating Nov. 1.

One of the newer touches—added three years ago—is the sequencing of the lights to music. Greg is a member of Planet Christmas, a nationwide group of Christmas lighting enthusiasts. One of the members created software and hardware that controls the lights to go on and off to the beat of the music. 

"It makes a great impression on people. It makes them happy," Loretta said. 

The display will stay up through the end of the year. For photos and more about the house, visit zimchristmas.com. 

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