City of SeaTac will not host July 4 festivities in 2025

The city of SeaTac will not host formal Fourth of July evening festivities this year. Instead, Angle Lake Park – where the city has traditionally held such events – will be open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on July 4 for activities such as swimming and relaxing on the dock, according to the city’s website.

The decision came amid officials’ public safety concerns for a large anticipated crowd, and first responders being short-staffed, according to SeaTac City Councilmember Senayet Negusse.

Last year’s Fourth of July event at Angle Lake Park drew close to 10,000 attendees, or “nearly triple the safe capacity of the park,” Negusse said, noting that only 10 officers were on duty. However, she said there were no major incidents during last year’s celebration.

“We understand as a council how meaningful the Fourth of July celebration is, but when you have your police and emergency management and park staff saying, ‘We are at capacity, and this is the most responsible approach,’ the council recognized that we just can’t take the risk,” Negusse said.

She said the city’s decision to not host a formal Fourth of July event had nothing to do with the drone light show it put on last year, where 55 of 200 drones dropped into Angle Lake shortly after the show began. The city paid $40,000 for the show; it later received a full refund from the company that supplied the drones, according to the official City of SeaTac Blog.

The city stopped its involvement with fireworks shows in 2024 after a resident disliked the noise of the hydroplane races and complained that certain areas of the park were closed during it. The resident brought up a 1932 state Supreme Court ruling to the city which argues that the city cannot prohibit people “except those taking part” in boat races from using Angle Lake, which is privately owned.

The city took the resident’s interpretation a step further and stopped funding fireworks displays, realizing such shows would also limit public access to the park, since the city would have to close public shoreline to load barges on the lake to set off the fireworks, according to Seattle station KING 5.

Although officials are encouraging residents to attend Fourth of July events in nearby cities including Federal Way and Kent, fireworks in SeaTac will still go off – just without the city’s sponsorship, said John Bennett, former board president of the Angle Lake Shore Club, an organization of residents. The organization will hold its own fireworks show at 10:15 p.m. in the southeast corner of Angle Lake. Fireworks will launch into the sky for about 20 minutes, Bennett said. The organization raised over $27,000 in donations from community members to make this year’s event possible.

“The Angle Lake Shore Club is putting on the fireworks show because of the amount of people that donated,” Bennett said. “If we hadn’t hit our goal, that would have told us no one cares, or no one wants it, and we’re not seeing that or hearing that at all.”

The club hosted its own fireworks show last year. In previous years, the city would hold fireworks shows with financial support from the organization.

Bennett said SeaTac’s Fourth of July events are the “pinnacle for this entire community,” though the city has already decided to pause large-scale programming for next year’s Fourth of July. Bennett said he hopes the city finds other ways to support future festivities, especially as the country will celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2026.

“The worry is, with the way inflation has been and people’s wallets having to tighten, we don’t know that we’re going to be able to put on a fireworks show next year,” Bennett said.