Most of the floats that roll down Colorado Boulevard every January 1 are built by one of a handful of professional companies. Phoenix Decorating Company works out of a plaza in Irwindale. Fiesta Productions operates from Avenida Padilla, also in Irwindale. Artistic Entertainment Services runs its shop on Seco Street in Pasadena. These firms build for cities, corporations and civic groups that want a Rose Parade entry without staffing a volunteer crew for five months.
South Pasadena has never gone that route. Its float is one of only six left in the entire parade built and funded entirely by a city's own volunteers and donors, alongside entries from Burbank, Downey, La Cañada Flintridge, Sierra Madre and the Cal Poly universities. The South Pasadena Tournament of Roses, known locally as SPTOR, has built and decorated its own float every year since 1893, and its first entry rolled down Colorado Boulevard in 1911. That makes it the oldest self-built float still in the parade.
Right now, on Fair Oaks Avenue, that tradition is in its most visible phase of the year.
What's Happening on Fair Oaks Avenue Right Now
The construction tent went up in August behind the War Memorial Building at 435 Fair Oaks Avenue, the same site SPTOR has used for years. Inside, a construction crew has been welding the chassis, wiring the animation mechanisms and shaping the underlying structure since work ramped up in mid-July. Deco Squad sign-ups, the shifts open to any resident who wants to glue seeds, paint petals or apply flowers, opened September 15 at sptor.org. That window has been open a little over a week.
Decorating will run in shifts through the fall, building toward what the committee calls Deco Week, five days between December 26 and December 30 when the pace picks up and volunteers work in longer stretches to finish before parade morning. Anyone thirteen or older can join a shift. Younger volunteers, ten to twelve, can work outside the tent under supervision. None of it requires float-building experience. The committee's own volunteer page describes the goal plainly: newcomers and longtime decorators are equally welcome, and the only real requirement is a willingness to get glue on your clothes.
Fourteen Months, Not Twelve
Here is the detail that explains why the tent never really closes. Ed Donnelly, who chaired the committee through the build of South Pasadena's 2026 float, pointed out last December that design work on next year's entry starts fourteen months before it appears in the parade, not twelve. That means while volunteers were still gluing flowers onto "The Great Picnic Heist," the float that carried South Pasadena into the 137th Rose Parade this past January 1, the design for the following year's entry was already locked in.
That overlap is why South Pasadena's Rose Parade tradition never actually pauses. One float is always mid-construction while the next is already on paper. This year's design, called "Welcome to the Neighborhood," shows a family of bluebirds moving into a new home while a squirrel arrives with an armful of acorns, a skunk offers a bouquet of tulips and a groundhog carries a bundle of fresh carrots. It was illustrated by Renee Hoss-Johnson, the same local artist who drew last year's bear-and-ants design, and it ties into the 2027 parade's overall theme, "Welcome."
The Man Who Learned to Drive This Float
That theme was chosen by Terry Madigan, president of the Tournament of Roses Association and a South Pasadena resident. Madigan grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and volunteered with SPTOR as a student at South Pasadena High School, driving the city's own float in the 1981 and 1982 Rose Parades. Decades later, as the person responsible for setting the theme that guides every float builder, marching band and equestrian unit in the parade, he picked a word rooted in his own history with this exact tradition. John Adamson, SPTOR's current president, relayed what Madigan told him when the 2027 design was unveiled, describing the float as "that sense of belonging that people really need, and you find in South Pasadena."
Janet Benjamin, the committee's longtime Decorating Chairperson, put the appeal of the work more simply when last year's design was announced. "It's truly magical to bring a float rendering to life," she said. Anyone who has walked past the tent on a Saturday morning in November, when the deco squad is out in force with paintbrushes and trays of seeds, has seen roughly what she means.
What Volunteer Tradition Actually Costs
None of this is free, and the numbers tell their own story about what a completely self-funded float requires. When SPTOR unveiled its 2026 design, the committee said it needed to raise nearly $150,000 for flowers and construction materials. For the 2027 float now under construction, that figure has climbed to nearly $200,000.
The committee raises that money through a mix of channels that run all year: banner sponsorships along the tent site, an annual golf tournament at Arroyo Seco Golf Course on Lohman Lane, souvenir sales, a raffle, a See's Candy fundraiser and direct donations. Every dollar goes toward flowers, paint, adhesive and the raw materials that turn a bare chassis into something that competes against corporately built entries for the same judging awards.
That competition is not symbolic. South Pasadena's 2026 float, "The Great Picnic Heist," won the Tournament's Past President Award for the most outstanding innovation in the use of floral and non-floral materials, an award decided by the same judges who evaluate floats built by professional companies with year-round staff and dedicated warehouses. A volunteer crew working out of a tent on Fair Oaks Avenue beat entries built with a fraction of the constraints.
Watching It Happen
The tradition traces back to South Pasadena's Independence Day parade each summer, when SPTOR committee members ride the float's bare chassis, nicknamed "the beast" by longtime volunteers, down Mission Street before construction begins in earnest. It is a small, almost private preview of the transformation ahead: a steel frame in July, a finished float by New Year's Day, and in between, months of Saturday mornings when neighbors who have never touched a float before stand next to volunteers who have been doing this since the 1980s.
Residents who want to see any part of that process for themselves do not need a special invitation. The tent behind the War Memorial Building is a fixture of daily life on Fair Oaks Avenue every fall, and the deco squad sign-up sheet at sptor.org is open now for anyone who wants a shift before Deco Week closes it out in late December.
The float still has to survive that stretch, get judged against entries with far bigger budgets, and make the turn onto Colorado Boulevard on New Year's Day. South Pasadena has been betting on volunteers to pull that off since 1893, and the tent on Fair Oaks Avenue is where this year's version of that bet is currently being built.
If you have lived in South Pasadena long enough to remember a few different float designs rolling past on New Year's morning, you already know how much of the town's identity runs through that tent. The Middleman Team has watched the same construction season come and go on Fair Oaks Avenue for years, and if you are ever curious about what a house near that stretch of town is worth, or just want to talk about how a hundred-year-old volunteer tradition still beats professional float builders at their own game, we're easy to find.
