Boca Raton staff review centennial events, public art and Wildflower Park legacy project

City staff presented an update on Boca Raton’s centennial activities at the Aug. 25 workshop, highlighting community programming, education partnerships and several public‑art projects that will be completed as the year proceeds.

Ann Marie Connolly, director of communications and marketing, and Amy D'Onorzio, amphitheater and community events manager, said the city launched a centennial website and merchandise, has staged five major centennial events so far (including a Meisner Amphitheatre concert and a drone show at BRIC that together drew about 10,000 attendees), and produced a Boca Raton Untold video series in partnership with Lynn University that has more than 50,000 views across six videos.

Staff described Ode to Boca (a community writing program integrated with Palm Beach County School District curricula for the 2025–26 school year), public‑art installations (including two plastic‑poetry pieces and a sculpture in Sanborn Square), and a Voices to Boca oral‑history project produced with Flamingo House. A Wildflower Park Centennial Legacy Art Project will add four mosaics to the park pavilion, a new splash‑pad asphalt artistic treatment and reinstated swings; staff targeted a Dec. 6 unveiling of the Wildflower Park improvements.

Staff said partners and sponsors — 13 in total — helped stage activations across the city (examples include Brightline station activations and a centennial ale brewed by a local brewer). The city also plans a centennial time capsule to be presented at the Oct. 25 free Decades concert and temporarily displayed at Spanish River Library before returning to City Hall.

Council members praised the events and thanked staff and community partners; several expressed interest in carrying successful activations into future programming and embedding centennial content into school curricula.