Drone show above the Square will replace fireworks this Fourth of July

Below, hundreds of North Texans gathered, craning their necks with their smartphones pointed skyward for the New Year’s Eve celebration to ring in 2022. Sky Elements, a Frisco-based drone company, had launched 225 drones and flew them next to Reunion Tower. Their drones’ lights were coordinated with the ones from the Reunion Tower ball and the nearby fireworks erupting all around them. It was the first year for the Lone Star NYE event to host a drone art light show. An industry boom was in the works.

A year later, swarms of drones were appearing in places like Colorado, Utah and Texas, replacing fireworks with drone shows for Fourth of July celebrations. In Galveston, after an hour delay, sea creatures, a patriotic eagle and the American and Texas flags replaced the explosions and thunderous booms that often erupted above the seawall, to a mixed reaction from the crowd, according to KHOU-TV news.

“From an American flag to custom logos, we’ve even done QR codes that work in the sky,” Preston Ward, the chief pilot and general counsel for Sky Elements Drones, told KHOU in 2022.

“So you can do a lot of creative things you just can’t get with fireworks.”

Those creative things will be replacing traditional fireworks in the sky over downtown Denton this Fourth of July with a drone show from Sky Elements.

The free, family-friendly event will begin at 6 p.m. July 3. Sponsored by the city and Denton Noon Kiwanis Club, Denton’s July Jubilee will offer children’s activities, food trucks, a hot dog-eating contest and live music by Denton legend Brave Combo. The drone show will take off at 9:30 p.m.

The club will continue to raise funds for the Kiwanis Club Children’s Clinic, which offers care for local children through a network of health care providers.

“It is a free show. We’re fronting the bill and trying to make money with the Bucket Brigade, and East Side is giving us a VIP area to sell,” said Hank Dickenson, chair of the Kiwanis Club’s fireworks committee.

“From the club’s standpoint, making it free allows people to come and support downtown businesses that night and in that process help the children’s clinic.”

Over the years, the Kiwanis Club has hosted the annual fireworks show at Apogee Stadium to raise money for the children’s clinic.

The club paused the event in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19, then returned last year but held it at North Lakes Park because the stadium wasn’t available.

Kiwanis Club President James Hilton called the park the perfect spot because it had the best parking “and all this open area that the public knows where it is,” the Denton Record-Chronicle reported last year.

But the new location wasn’t well received by some in the community.

The Linda McNatt Animal Care & Adoption Center is adjacent to North Lakes Park. Animal Ethics, a public charity dedicated to animal rights, warns that fireworks are harmful to dogs since they can hear sounds up to 60,000 hertz, compared with humans, who hear only up to 20,000 hertz.

The thunderous booms and explosions from fireworks can cause anxiety and damage to their hearing.

Shortly after the 2022 celebration, city staff informed the Kiwanis Club that North Lakes wouldn’t be available for this year’s event. Stuart Birdseye, a city spokesperson, said that it was due to planned road construction on Bonnie Brae Street. The fireworks show has been known to draw thousands of people to the area.

The news came at a time when the growing expense and infrastructure issues were weighing on their minds at the Denton Noon Kiwanis Club. It was getting harder and harder to put on the annual fireworks show, Dickenson said.

For the July 2022 celebration, Birdseye said several departments supported the event logistics and execution, including Denton police, fire, emergency management, public affairs, animal services, capital projects, and parks and recreation.

The in-kind value was estimated at $24,095 with an actual cost of $21,662, Birdseye said.

Former Denton City Council member Jesse Davis heard about some of residents’ major concerns over hosting a fireworks show near an animal shelter. The threat of fire has always been a major concern when it comes to fireworks shows, as well. And the parking overflow into the surrounding neighborhoods was another issue for people who live there.

He was familiar with drone shows and said he started asking people what they thought about replacing fireworks with drone art. Some said, “No, it’s not the Fourth of July without fireworks.” Others replied, “The city doesn’t need to spend money on spectacles.”

But Davis disagreed with both of those perspectives.

“It was a very good price and a much more flexible light show and more creative elements, and not pyrotechnics,” Davis said. “It is not the same but because it is not, we can do it anywhere in the airspace where it is approved. It offers enormous opportunities for economic development.”

As a member of the Denton Chamber of Commerce, Dickenson said he understood the benefit to downtown businesses if they could host the July Fourth celebration on the Square. And while they could have taken the show back to Apogee Stadium, he said there’s a lot of cleanup and infrastructure work that cost the club additional money.

“We’re doing these events as fundraisers,” Dickenson said. “Every bit of money goes back into the children’s clinic, which makes medical, dental and pharmaceuticals possible for kids from families who couldn’t afford it otherwise.”

Drone shows usually last only about 10 minutes due to the batteries in the devices. The cost varies based on several factors — the logistics, the number of drones and the complexity of the show, Sky Elements explains on its website. For smaller shows, the cost can run about $20,000, and it can go much higher for larger, more intricate performances.

Dickenson said the cost of the drone show for Denton’s Fourth of July celebration is comparable to the traditional black powder fireworks show. City staff were still calculating the cost when the Record-Chronicle contacted them.

“It’s very similar to Denton’s Holiday Lighting [Festival],” Dickenson said. “It infuses activities in the downtown business area. There are a lot of positives.”