'Christmas at Panther Creek' attendance dips slightly
Jan. 11—Daviess County Parks and Recreation's "Christmas at Panther Creek" light show pulled in a crowd during its 19th holiday season.
Ross Leigh, director of the parks and recreation department, said 5,504 cars entered the park for the light show — a small dip in attendance compared to the more than 6,000 that purchased tickets in 2021.
"The reality was ... with the weather that we had on Dec. 22 and 23 — which are by far our two biggest nights — we were not open," he said. "Up to that point, we were pretty much on the same trajectory with what we had done in 2021. But those two nights really cost us."
Tickets for the event were $5 per car, which went up from $3 in 2019.
This year, $27,523 in admission fees were collected, with half of that amount being split among the five nonprofit agencies that applied to work the event and collect the $5 entry fee.
The recipients include Elite SAR Training, Joe Ford Nature Center, Owensboro Regional Recovery, Southern Oaks Elementary School's PTO and Wendell Foster. Each entity will receive $2,752.
The 2021 event raised $31,853, while 2020 hit a record high of $49,308 during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
While the event saw a slight decrease in terms of attendance and funds raised, Leigh said there has been an influx of nonprofits submitting applications to take part in working the event.
"We were in excess of 30 applications, and that was the same as the year before that," he said. "We have had years early on where there may have been eight to 10 applications, and now we're at 30-plus."
Leigh deems the event to be a success.
"I've always said I felt like we got a lot of bang for our buck," he said. "It takes quite a bit of time to be able to set up the lights and be able to get the power ran to each one of the individual displays, but at the same time, we're looking at 5,500 vehicles with an average of three people per car; that's an excess of 16,000 people that came through ....
"From our perspective, it's something that the community enjoys and has now through the 19th season."
The event will celebrate its 20th year in November, and Leigh said he and parks and recreation are looking at what can be done in the space they have available for the milestone anniversary.
"It's hard to be able to add extra lights because ... you only got so much space," he said. "I think there's other programming opportunities that we have used over the years (such as) Christmas poster contests, we've had Santa and Mrs. Claus there at random times, we talked about bringing in live reindeer for people to see live reindeer at the park.
"There's a lot of opportunity to discuss that with a couple different volunteers, and we'll see what we can do for this year to make it a special five-week event honoring the 20th anniversary."
Leigh said applications for nonprofits to participate in the event will be available beginning in September.
For more information on how to be involved with "Christmas at Panther Creek," call the parks and recreation office at 270-685-6142.
