If you stood in Samuel J. Ferreri Community Park last December, watching four hundred drones spell out a hundred years of Greenacres history over Santa's sleigh and an ice rink that has no business existing in South Florida, you could be forgiven for thinking you'd just seen the big one. The kickoff. The moment the city spent a year planning.
You hadn't seen the finale. You'd seen the opening bracket of a year-long celebration, and the city had made clear that night was only the beginning. The actual close, the second bracket, comes back to the same park on December 5, 2026, wrapped inside the same event Greenacres already throws every year. That detail is easy to miss. The city didn't invent two new mega-events for its 100th birthday. It took the one holiday tradition everyone already shows up for and ran it twice, nearly a year apart, with the Centennial stitched into both ends.
The Kickoff Was the Warm-Up, Not the Peak
The Centennial Kick-Off Celebration on December 13, 2025, followed the city's annual Holiday in the Park event, then layered on a 400-drone show at 6:45 p.m., carnival rides, an ice skating rink, and free admission for residents who could show a driver's license or utility bill. It was, by design, a launch pad. The city called it exactly that: a way to "launch a year-long centennial celebration." The centennial's highlight reel was still ahead.
May Wasn't the Finale Either
The actual anniversary weekend landed five months later, on May 24, 2026, with the Centennial Birthday Bash back at Ferreri Park. The band Remix played, Pinecrest Bakery supplied the cake, and the Firefighters and Paramedics of Palm Beach County Local 2928, IAFF, ran the grills. A Kids Zone went up courtesy of Gehring Group and Brown & Brown Public Sector, and WPBF ABC 25 covered it for anyone who couldn't make it. This was the day the city officially turned 100. It still wasn't the ending. It was the middle beat in a three-part structure the city has been building since that first drone show: kickoff, birthday, close-out.
What's Actually Left on the Calendar
Here's where it gets useful if you live here and haven't been tracking the centennial page. Two things remain, and they're closer together than the gap between the last two.
The first is small and easy to miss: Sunday Sounds, the city's free concert series at Ferreri Park, runs only three times a year. The third and final one lands September 27, 2026, from 4 to 7 p.m., with live music, food trucks, and the kind of lawn-chair crowd that treats it like a standing tradition. Miss this one and there isn't another until next year's series starts over. It's not a centennial event on paper, but it's the last piece of recurring civic programming before the year's real closing chapter.
The second is the one that actually completes the bookend. The Centennial Close-Out Celebration happens December 5, 2026, from 3 to 9 p.m., back at Ferreri Park, and again follows the annual Holiday in the Park event, just like the kickoff did a year earlier. Carnival rides, an ice rink, face painting, food and craft vendors, and another drone show closing out what the first one opened. Same park. Same slot in the holiday calendar. One year, almost to the week, after the first drones went up. If you want to see the centennial as a single story instead of three unconnected parties, this is the night that closes the loop.
The Texture Between the Big Nights
The centennial isn't the only thing giving this fall its shape. The city has also been running the Eat Local, Eat Greenacres initiative, a free spotlight program that puts local restaurants in short videos on the city's own social channels. Gigi Chazu, the city's Director of Economic Development, put the goal plainly: participating helps restaurant owners attract new and repeated customers. It's a low-key program, but it's already surfaced a real cross-section of what's cooking in Greenacres, from Coco Mambo Restaurant's Cuban and Latin American plates to Veracruz Restaurant's live-music dinner service, Chris' Taverna, Yen's Kitchen, Jollof Pot, Los Brothers Restaurant, and Off The Clock. None of these are new to town. What's new is the city actively pointing a camera at them and asking residents to notice.
There's also a genuine point of civic pride running quietly under all of this. Astro Skate, tucked into a building on Jog Road, is home to one of the country's most elite indoor roller speed skating teams. Miles Mead was named National Speedskating Circuit Grand Champion and Fastest Man on Skates this year after winning four races and four gold medals, and teammate Piper Leazier competes at the same level under head coach Patty Leazier. It's the kind of fact that doesn't show up on a typical neighborhood roundup because it has nothing to do with restaurants or real estate. It has everything to do with what it feels like to live somewhere small enough that a national champion trains a few miles from your house and the city notices.
The Ten Weeks That Actually Matter
If you're mapping out the rest of the year in Greenacres, the sequence looks like this:
- September 27: the last Sunday Sounds concert of 2026 at Ferreri Park, free and family-friendly, with no fourth date until next year's series begins.
- Through the fall: the Eat Local, Eat Greenacres spotlight keeps rotating through restaurants worth revisiting.
- December 5: the Centennial Close-Out Celebration, layered onto Holiday in the Park, closing the exact structure the December 2025 kickoff opened.
None of this required the city to build something new from scratch. It took a party residents already loved, ran it at both ends of the year, and let the smaller, recurring civic rhythm, the concerts, the restaurant spotlights, the pride in a skating team most cities wouldn't think to mention, fill in the middle. The finale isn't a surprise. It's the thing you already do every December, just with a hundred years of context attached this time.
If you're already counting down to that first weekend of December, you know the drill: get to Ferreri Park early, because the rides and the rink fill in fast once the drones start drawing a crowd.
Living in Greenacres means you get to watch a city's whole identity get built out of its own habits rather than imported spectacle. That's worth noticing whether or not you ever plan to sell a house here. If you ever do want a read on what a home in this neighborhood is actually worth, or you're curious how a market this specific gets priced, Helen Bassie is a call away and always happy to talk shop about the neighborhood first.
