Cherry Festival By The Numbers

More than 500,000 attendees. Some 10,000 staffing hours and 35,000 volunteer hours. Approximately 150 events and activities – 85 percent of which are free – over the course of eight days.

Those are just a few numbers that reflect the scope of the National Cherry Festival, which is marking its 90th anniversary. Here's a look at some fun facts and figures about the event – from the cost of fireworks and the top speed of the Blue Angels to the most common 911 calls and how many pounds of cinnamon it takes to coat all those elephant ears.

Happy Fourth of July!

Fireworks
Around 10:30pm tonight, a barge that’s been loaded with approximately 1,400 firework shells – ranging in size from 3 to 10 inches – and towed out to the middle of West Grand Traverse Bay will kick off the city’s annual Fourth of July show. For 30 minutes, the unmanned vehicle will shoot off a dazzling array of fireworks, which are controlled electronically by an operator sitting 1,000 feet south in the Open Space.

The nonprofit Traverse City Boom Boom Club makes the event possible, raising funds to cover the annual display. According to President Tim Hinkley, tonight’s show will cost $39,000 – not including ancillary costs like insurance.

The show is also “choreographed to music electronically,” says Hinkley. “There are 14 or 15 different songs that all have to do with the Fourth of July, summer or Michigan.” Each minute of show time takes Great Lakes Fireworks approximately an hour to program. Looking to tune in? Turn your dial to WTCM at 103.5 FM.

Blue Angels
Traverse City is one of approximately 30 locations the U.S. Navy Blue Angels will visit during show season (March to November), performing 70 shows for 11 million spectators. The team, whose average pilot is 33 years old, also meets more than 50,000 people each season during school and hospital visits.

Though it might sound like it when they screech overhead, the pilots don’t break the sound barrier. The fastest speed they’ll reach during shows like the Cherry Festival is 700 mph (though the aircraft are capable of hitting 1,400 mph), with the slowest speed dipping down to 120 mph. At times during their performance, the Blue Angels will fly as high as 15,000 feet (during a vertical roll) and as low as 50 feet (during a sneak pass). While performing the Diamond 360 maneuver, the planes will be as close as 18 inches apart.

The Blue Angels program isn’t cheap to operate: A single F/A-18 A Hornet costs approximately $21 million, and burns through an average 1,300 gallons of fuel per hour. It weighs nearly 25,000 pounds when empty. Fat Albert – the Blue Angels’ C-130 – can hold up to 46,000 pounds of fuel and has a cruising speed of 375 mph.

Vendors
A stop at Gibby’s Concessions is an annual tradition for many festivalgoers. Office Manager Jamie Hansen says the company – which is celebrating its 70th year in business – doesn’t track individual item sales, but their prep list hints at the massive amount of traffic they’ll experience this week.

“We use 1,200 pounds of cinnamon and sugar to top our elephant ears,” she says. “We squeeze 3,000 lemons for our fresh-squeezed lemonade.” Customers also go through 96 large cans of ketchup for their Gibby’s French Fries during the week.

A stop at the stall of Gallagher’s Farm Market Saturday revealed the company moved through 18 crates of cherries in by-the-cup sales at the Open Space. At 25 pounds a crate, that’s over 450 pounds of cherries sold the first day.

Parking
All those festival attendees have to park somewhere – and many of them choose the two downtown parking decks. The Larry C. Hardy Parking Deck had 7,514 admissions during the 2015 festival, hosting an average 939 cars per day. The Old Town Parking Deck admitted 4,043 cars that same week, for an average 505 cars per day, according to the Downtown Development Authority. The busiest days for parking during Cherry Fest? Kids Day (Thursday) – and the Fourth of July.

Trash/Recycling
Managing trash, recycling and composting at the festival is no easy feat. Last year’s festival produced just shy of 56,000 pounds of waste, says Andy Gale of Bay Area Recycling for Charities. That breaks down into 34,010 pounds of recyclables, 8,880 pounds of compost, and 13,104 pounds of trash. In the course of its three-year contract taking lead on trash with the festival, BARC improved from 50 percent recovery (waste diverted from landfills) to 85 percent, according to Gale.

911 Calls
During Cherry Festival week, Grand Traverse County 911/Central Dispatch receives an average 4,700 phone calls – a 20 percent increase in call volume over other summer weeks. Less than half of those calls, 2,300, result in service being dispatched. So what happens to the rest?

“We take a lot of calls for things that are not emergencies,” says Deputy Director Leah Hornacek. The most common non-emergency call: questions about when the fireworks start. Other calls range from requests for boating forecasts or directions to noise complaints to inquiries about festival events. “We only have 3-6 people answering phones up here at any given time, so it is very important that we leave 911 lines open for true emergencies,” reminds Hornacek.

For non-emergency calls (no immediate threat to life or property) during the festival, call 231-922-4550.