‘Hawkhouse’ owner says ABC reality TV show spawned complaints, changes

Kirkland neighbors have apparently grown weary of the yearly lighting extravaganza at the “Hawkhouse,” meaning next Christmas, Anthony Mish’s gift to King County may be glowing in a new location.

Mish, who began the illuminating tradition about three years ago, told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that the city will allow the Kirkland resident to run the Hawkhouse in its normal location &#8212 his home &#8212 this year and will help find a new spot for next year.

Related: Kirkland man’s massive Seahawks-inspired holiday lights put Clark Griswold to shame

Mish said his immediate neighbors support his Christmas cheery mission, but that traffic has become an issue for the area.

“It’s just tough because there’s not really place where you can park a lot of people around my house,” he said.

Mish and the city’s ideas included shuttling people toward his home or renting a place in the park and transforming it into a new Hawkhouse.

Mish said he’d heard threats from third parties that the city wanted to shut down his operation.

“So when I went into the meeting I was kind of scared,” he said. “I don’t like confrontation, so I didn’t know, but they were actually very supportive, very nice. They worked with me really well. They were all excited about the house, too. They were like it’d be cool if there is a place that we could do it next year so it’s not in the neighborhood and so everybody’s happy.”

Mish says he spends about 400 hours setting up the roughly 175,000 synchronized holiday lights that and major Seattle sports team logos that twinkle along to original music by “Velvet,” plus songs such as “Happy” and “Uptown Funk” that loop hourly.

“I’ll be adding more as the time goes, but it takes about 10 hours to do three minutes of a song,” he said.

Related: Thieves allegedly steal truck from Kirkland’s ‘Hawkhouse’

The HawkHouse is free and open to the public, with villages, waterfalls, trains and ice tunnels inside the house for kids.

“It gets overwhelming because it takes me about 400 hours to do it and then also every single night I have to stay on my porch and open my house to the public,” he said. “But the amount of good it does for people – like raising stuff for charity and also just to see all the smiles on everybody’s face – it makes it worth it.”

Mish said he’s made arrangements this year to limit the music volume and bass level by putting outdoor speakers in the trees.

“Before, in order to hear it out in the street, I had to blast the music from my house so I could see how it would just carry out throughout the neighborhood,” he said.

Mish’s masterpiece will also be featured on ABC’s reality TV show “The Great Christmas Light Fight,” scheduled for Dec. 21. It was during filming for that show that Mish believes roiled his Kirkland neighbors.

“All the complaints came in before the season even started, because that night they filmed until almost four in the morning and there was live performances and stuff like that,” he said. “There was a DJ out there and the music was cranked all the way up.”

Mish said he knew the filming could be boisterous and late, so, beforehand, he offered each of his neighbors a free night at a hotel. Everyone declined the offer, he said.

“I don’t think that they realized how loud it was going to be and I think everybody just got scared like, ‘Oh no, this is what it’s going to be like this year,'” he said. “But that was just like a one-night thing and I think that’s what caused all the uproar.”

Dori admitted to Anthony that, if he lived in Kirkland, he might have been one of the angry neighbors.

“I love the Seahawks, I love Christmas lights,” Dori said. “But this would drive me insane if I lived near you.”