Dazzling Displays

Millions of lights stretching over 100 miles, 500 acres and 44 nights. This dazzling Holiday Festival of Lights illuminates the University Town Center area each year. And this season, the 10th anniversary of the event, the display does not intend to disappoint.

“While it may not be feasible to light every acre of the UTC area, if you visit, you won’t be able go anywhere without seeing holiday lights,” says Cliff McHenry, the director of property management for Benderson Development, which helped pioneer the event in 2011.

A decade ago, at its inception, the lighting program only included some rental displays and three crew teams, McHenry says. Since then, it has burgeoned into a yearlong undertaking.

"People have told me that it was like being at Disney, and I take that as a high compliment. Those types of things make the long hours and days worthwhile. I think the personal fulfillment is building on a tradition and seeing the joy it brings to so many people.” — Cliff McHenry, director of property management, Benderson Development

“Planning for this event is virtually year-round. We’re not working on this 365 days a year, but it’s probably at least 350,” says McHenry, who has been with Benderson, one of the largest privately owned real estate development companies in the country, for 14 years. “It is a really great effort by a lot of folks on the Benderson team.”

In total, about 60 people from Benderson — in marketing, property management, maintenance, design, construction and beyond — produce the display annually, along with help from outside vendors.

“We try to start around the first or second week of September, working on the light installations in areas where the lights wouldn’t be visible to visitors,” McHenry says. “Then, almost immediately after Halloween, we really focus on all the visual elements that are such a big part of the show.”

Those elements include lighted Christmas trees, presents, Santas and crew boats by the water (to represent Nathan Benderson Park, which is a premier facility for rowing teams and worldwide championships).

“It’s a lot of work, and a lot of people are dedicated to making this a success,” McHenry says. “We just want to make the holidays a little brighter.”

Handling the setup alone requires huge amounts of labor; the lighting displays currently take up about 20,000 square feet of storage space. And as the need for storage space grows, so does the menu of lighting displays. The events have consistently been adapted to fit the times.

“It was certainly a challenge last year,” McHenry says. “One of the things we pivoted to because of COVID concerns was we created a choreographed, animated light show that gave people the opportunity to enjoy the holiday lights” while allowing them the flexibility to stay in their cars or be outside and socially distanced.

The event lifted spectators’ spirits in the middle of the pandemic.

“We got a lot of overwhelmingly positive feedback last year given the pandemic and people not being able to visit with their families around the holidays,” McHenry says. “People were happy that we didn’t cancel the festivities. We saw people FaceTiming their families and showing them the lights, and it was pretty special.”

Some of the other attractions McHenry and his team have included in the displays over the years have been holiday outdoor movies, fireworks and even sand sculptures (such as a 22-ton sand snowman that sat near the traffic light by Target on University Parkway and stayed up — with a sealed coating — for the entire season).

There was an ugly sweater Christmas crawl on “Ugly Sweater Alley,” where spectators could don the sweaters and take pictures with their friends. There was a Nik Wallenda-themed lighted tightrope walker. There was also a Mote-inspired display with hanging blue lights and floating sea turtles.

So what’s new to see this year? It was still a bit of a secret at press time, but McHenry did share some details.

The Holiday Festival of Lights is just one part of the overall Holidays at UTC event, for which nightly light shows kick off Nov. 20 with Santa’s Grand Arrival Parade and Fireworks Spectacular and runs through Jan. 2.

Starting Thanksgiving weekend, there will be a free outdoor holiday movie series every Friday and Saturday night at 7 p.m., and fireworks on Saturdays at 9 p.m. There will also be horse-drawn carriage rides from 6-10 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.

The last scheduled day for the holiday light show is Jan. 3, and the displays will be removed a week after that, so visitors should be sure to ogle as much as possible before then. McHenry looks forward to seeing the visitors’ responses to this year’s surprises — his favorite part, he says.

“People have told me that it was like being at Disney, and I take that as a high compliment,” McHenry says. “Those types of things make the long hours and days worthwhile. I think the personal fulfillment is building on a tradition and seeing the joy it brings to so many people.”

For more information on the Holiday Festival of Lights, visit UTCSarasota.com.