Every winter, on a Saturday morning the city sets a few months ahead of time, Lighthouse Drive closes to cars. A parade forms at the Pink Church, the landmark everyone in town calls by that name whether or not they've ever been inside it, and moves north along Lighthouse Drive to Sample Road before turning into Frank McDonough Park. Floats roll past from groups like the Exchange Club of Pompano Beach. A runner or two from that morning's 5K is still catching their breath on the sidelines. Later that day, a concert and fireworks close things out, at Dan Witt Park in some years and back at Frank McDonough Park in others. The next day, families are back at Frank McDonough for Family Sports Day.
The city calls the whole thing Keeper Days, and it has been running some version of this weekend since at least 2013. What's easy to miss, if you've lived here long enough to take it for granted, is how little geography the entire event needs. A city of roughly 10,500 people manages to throw its biggest weekend of the year using two parks, one community center, and two connecting streets, no matter which of those two parks ends up hosting the evening program in a given year.
The City Fits on One Corridor
Frank McDonough Park does double duty as the parade's finish line and the site of the 5K's start and finish. Runners registering for the Keeper Days 5K Run/Walk pick up their race packets not at the park itself but at the John Trudel Community Center, which sits inside Dan Witt Park, itself a short walk from Frank McDonough. That's the same community center building where, in years the evening program lands there, the concert and fireworks happen. Two parks. One community center, physically inside one of them.
Even the overflow logistics stay local. Race organizers direct participants who need parking to the Venetian Isle Shopping Center, home to the neighborhood Publix on North Federal Highway, and encourage everyone else to walk, bike, or carpool by golf cart. Police close roads on Lighthouse Drive and Sample Road for the morning, which in a city this size accounts for a meaningful share of the main north-south and east-west routes residents would otherwise use to get around.
The city's own sponsorship materials for Keeper Days confirm the pattern rather than romanticize it. A $1,000 sponsorship gets a business a banner at Frank McDonough Park or Dan Witt Park, plus signage along Sample Road and Lighthouse Drive the following week. There isn't a third park in the rotation. There isn't a downtown strip where a banner could go instead. The two parks and the two connecting streets are the inventory.
The pattern holds even outside Keeper Days. This spring, the city's other marquee gathering, a concert featuring the band Spektora alongside a lineup of food trucks, was held on Saturday, April 18, 2026, at the same Frank McDonough Park that hosts the parade every winter.
Same Buildings, Every Other Week Too
This isn't just a parade-weekend quirk. The John Trudel Community Center at Dan Witt Park is where the city runs chair yoga, art classes, robotics, Mommy and Me sessions, and senior programming during the rest of the year. It's the building the Parks and Recreation Department is actively recruiting outside instructors to teach in, according to the department's own postings. Reserve a tennis court and you're calling a separate number for the Lighthouse Point Tennis Center. Reserve the Ash Mills Pavilion, which sits at that same tennis complex, and that's a third phone number. But for almost everything else, resident life routes through Dan Witt Park's community center or Frank McDonough Park.
City governance runs on its own separate, similarly small footprint. Code Enforcement Board and Community Appearance Board meetings are held at Fletcher Hall, the same building that houses basic city business. The city's public hearings on next year's budget and millage rate are scheduled there for September 14 and September 24, 2026. That same civic machinery is currently working through a drainage and roadway improvement project along NE 21st Avenue, which began the first week of January 2026 and was slated to take about nine months, putting completion around early October. Back in February, the city used its monthly newsletter, the same channel that announces Keeper Days sign-ups, to introduce a new composting pilot with a partner called Filthy Organics. None of it requires more than the handful of buildings and one newsletter the city already has.
The Honor Roll Instead of a Landmark
Every Keeper Days weekend centers on naming that year's "Keepers," residents chosen to be honored, in the city's own language, as modern-day counterparts to the lighthouse keepers of the past. It's a rotating designation rather than a permanent one. The city doesn't add a new plaque or rename a street each year. It adds a name to the list, honored for one weekend, remembered by the community rather than by a sign.
The list itself tells you something about who gets recognized here. In 2017, the honorees were Hugh and Joy Ganter, Tom Greene, and the Kniskern Family, celebrated at a kickoff dinner at the Lighthouse Point Yacht Club. In 2022, the title went to Patty Petrone and Michael McLain. By 2023, the dinner had moved to Galuppi's Restaurant in nearby Pompano Beach, where the city honored retired Commissioner Earl Maucker, Faith Olmstead, and the late Mayor Glenn Troast. The most recent Keepers, honored in 2025 at Galuppi's, were Donna Cohen, Linda Hinkle, and retired Commissioner Sandy Johnson, a year the city built the entire weekend's theme around the Lighthouse Point Library's 60th anniversary. It reads less like a hall of fame and more like a running record of who has quietly kept the place functioning, which fits a city that doesn't have much room, physically or symbolically, for permanent monuments to individuals.
What the Weekend Actually Looks Like
Strip away the ceremony and the sequence is straightforward:
- A kickoff dinner on Friday evening, honoring that year's Keepers. The venue has moved over the years, from the Lighthouse Point Yacht Club in 2017 to Galuppi's Restaurant in nearby Pompano Beach by 2023, but the format stays the same: tickets, a shared table, a night built around the honorees.
- The 5K Run/Walk on Saturday morning, starting and finishing at Frank McDonough Park, with packet pickup at the John Trudel Community Center the day before and again race morning.
- The parade immediately after, from the Pink Church up Lighthouse Drive to Sample Road and into Frank McDonough Park, followed by several hours of entertainment and activities at that same park.
- A concert, additional entertainment, and fireworks that evening, at Dan Witt Park in some years and at Frank McDonough Park in others.
- Family Sports Day on Sunday afternoon, back at Frank McDonough Park.
Nothing about that list requires a car once you're in the neighborhood. Nothing about it requires a venue the city doesn't already own and use for something else the other 50 weeks of the year.
The Takeaway for Anyone Who Actually Lives Here
If you're new to Lighthouse Point, or you've lived here for years and never quite connected the dots, the practical version of this is simple. When the city says an event is happening, it is almost certainly happening at Frank McDonough Park, Dan Witt Park, or the John Trudel Community Center inside it. Plan on walking or biking if you're within range, because road closures on Lighthouse Drive and Sample Road are part of how these weekends work, not an inconvenience around them. And if you're looking for overflow parking, the Publix at Venetian Isle has done that job for the city's biggest weekend more than once.
The bigger point is what it says about the place itself. A city built around canals and boat lifts, where plenty of daily life happens on the water, still gathers its entire population on foot, in the same two parks, for its most important weekend of the year. That's not an accident of scheduling. It's a fair description of how small and walkable the civic core of Lighthouse Point actually is, even in a county where most cities this size would have long since spread their events across half a dozen venues.
If you're curious about the water side of that equation, the team has written separately about what daily life looks like for boaters in Lighthouse Point. But the parks-and-parade version of this city is just as real, and arguably says more about who actually shows up when it counts.
The team at Premiere Realty works across Lighthouse Point and the rest of Palm Beach and Broward County, and it's easy to respect a city that still runs its whole year through two parks and one shared calendar. If you're weighing a move within the city, curious what your current home might be worth, or just want to talk through the neighborhood with someone who actually knows which park hosts what, reach out anytime and request a free home valuation.
