Riverhead’s Alive on 25 returns this year with two events — and a laser light show

The Alive on 25 summer street festival will return this year with two events which will bring fireworks and, for the first time, a laser light show, to downtown Riverhead.

The first event will be on July 5 and include fireworks starting at 9 p.m.. The second event is on Aug. 9 and includes a laser light show over the Peconic River and in the town square starting at 9 p.m. 

The events, which feature live music on multiple stages, local craft beverages, food trucks, street dining, vendors and activities on Main Street and the Peconic Riverfront, begin at 5 p.m. and officially end at 9:30 p.m. Rain dates for the events are on July 19 and Aug. 23. 

The Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association, which organizes the festival, decided to cut down the number of Alive on 25 events down from four events to two this year. 

For the first time, the street festival had a small financial loss last year, BIDMA executive director Kristy Verity said at a recent BIDMA board meeting. The first event of the summer, which coincides with Independence Day weekend, typically has an “enormous” turnout, and that attendance seems to dwindle with the other three events, she said. That caused some vendors to bow out of the festival altogether because they had to commit to attending all four events, she said.

“It’s also a huge drain of resources on the town and police department, emergency services,” Verity said. “So just working with them all together and having conversations, we feel like this would be a good move. We’ll try it out and see how it goes and keep evolving from there.”

This is the second big change to the street festival in recent memory; in 2022, BIDMA moved the festival from Thursday to Friday with the hope that weekend traffic could boost attendance. The move to Friday nights has been “very successful,” Verity said.