At 3 p.m. the City of South Haven closed Phoenix Street in the downtown area to begin preparing for their annual New Years Eve in South Haven event.
A few hours later, construction crews arrived and began pulling up large nets filled with beach balls and tied them between the traffic lights.
“We started that last year with 500,” said Scott Reinert, executive director of the South Haven Visitors Bureau. “This year we’re upping that to 1,400 beach balls will be dropping at midnight.”
Reinert said city officials felt that dropping beach balls at midnight instead of a large starlight was more appropriate for their beach town. And, when the balls drop it’ll mark the end of the city’s year-long birthday celebration: it’s sesquicentennial.
“It’ll be just a great time to celebrate,” Reinert said during an interview with FOX 17. “Matter of fact on the big screen that we’ll have, we'll have photos displaying throughout the night of different events that took place throughout the year to celebrate our 150 years.”
Reinert added that there will also be free ice skating for the first 250 guests who show up, arts and crafts activities for the kids, games and performaces by fire jugglers and fire hula hoop dancers.
He recommended that people come early. A few roads around the downtown area, including Phoenix Street, are closed due to construction and over 3,000 people are expected to come out.
“It’s going to be a great time. We’ve planned for this a long time,” Reinert said. “It should really just be a great celebration and a great way to kick off the New Year.”
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