 All right, good morning to everyone and we're going to go ahead and get started. Thank you all so much for being present with us today. My name is Henry Simons, I'm the Assistant City Manager over operations, of course, for the City of Columbia. And again, we would like to welcome you and thank you for your presence. As we gather to celebrate the ribbon cutting and opening of our very own community resource center here at the Catherine Bellfield Book of Washington Heights Cultural Arts Center. Thank you to our Mayor, Daniel Rickerman, our Mayor Pro Tem, Councilman named McDowell, who represents District 2. Also want to acknowledge our City Manager in her absence. Thank her for her continued guidance on all of our initiatives around parks and recreation. Also want to acknowledge Ms. Regina Williams who's here with us, President of the Book of Washington Heights Neighborhood Association, along with her board who is also some of our board members. See Kevin speaks here, some of our other board members are here with us on today. Today is a great day. Today is a monumental day that we're going to celebrate together. The Community Resource Center will be available for local small businesses and nonprofits that have an LLC or a 501C3 status. Through an application process, they will be able to secure free space to conduct business and to grow their organizations. City of Columbia's goal is to ensure that those who have dreams have a safe and secure space to make those dreams become a reality. City of Columbia Parks and Recreation Team will supervise and support the operations of the center and they will facilitate the actual application process with team members who will be on site. This will also be a space for training of potential business owners where we will provide classes and seminars to our community. We strongly believe that this will be an asset to the citizens of our community. So what will you see today as you enter the Community Resource Center? We have 10 workstations, community meeting space, a larger small conference room, a fully furnished office for staff, a fully renovated kitchen, break area, fully renovated restrooms. Our business leaders will have access to free Wi-Fi, copier, printer, auto-visual equipment for presentations, which includes a webcam for their use as well. We know business owners will bring their own computers but they'll have access to of course Wi-Fi. The Community Resource Center will be open from Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 to begin. Times may flex but to begin will be open from Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. We're grateful that we now have a Community Resource Center and the Book of Washington Heights community. It is something special. I'm excited about you walking through to see the space and we're just grateful for this opportunity. So now as we begin with remarks, we're going to have Ms. Regina Williams, the president of the Book of Washington Heights community association to speak, followed by Mayor Daniel Rickerman, and then our Mayor Pro Tem, councilman named McDowell. Following those remarks, I will come back up with some brief acknowledgments and we'll take a photo as we do the ribbon cutting and then we'll enter the Community Resource Center for a tour. All right, help me welcome Ms. Regina Williams. Good morning. Assistant City Manager Henry Simons, Mayor Daniel Rickerman, and Mayor Pro Tem. I get confused when I'm getting ready to say Reverend, a doctor, or... Ms. Holiness. Just call me. ...Hand Spanker, councilman Ed McDowell. Y'all, this day is a dream come true for us. I want to welcome you this morning to the Book of Washington Heights neighborhood. I'm Regina Williams and I follow in the footsteps of Catherine Margie Bellefield. But like Ms. Bellefield, I do not do it alone. Ms. Bellefield had Wanda and I have our organization, if you would please stand or wave your hand. We are a hard-working group of folk. We want you to know that this annex will serve as an example for the city of Columbia. We will show the city of Columbia how you take a community center and make it the center of the community. We will show you that this annex will continue to nurture minds from all across the city to become artisans and entrepreneurs. We will show the city of Columbia that this community and this resource center will continue to partner with schools and tutor and give extra love to the youth across the city of Columbia. We will partner with churches and provide computer skills free of charge and help willing adults to achieve their diploma or GED, free of charge. In other words, we want you to come and check us out over here. We want you to come and consider becoming a neighbor of ours here in Booker Washington Heights where we believe in revitalization and not gentrification. Thereby always showing that we in Booker Washington Heights will always stand on the positive side of change. And thus, we will move forward so that we can show you how much we love and appreciate the change that is coming and the change that we respect and love for our beautiful community. Thank you all. Thank you for coming and we look to be knocking on your doors one day. Thank you. Good morning everyone. Very exciting day here. In 2004, I ran for office and was elected the first time at large and I spent a great deal of time about two blocks from here in Miss Bellfield's living room. I didn't do a whole lot of talking, I did a whole lot of listening. Miss Bellfield was the anchor to this community. And her long-term vision was that this school would turn into a community center that was the emphasis of this community, that it was the basis for people to be able to have ideas, have resources and really be the center to build up this neighborhood one block at a time. I continued to ride around, we got new streets, we're waiting on new houses. We're going to continue to invest in here, but for me, this center, when we had an opportunity to take a library that had been flooded out and turn it into something that really could be an asset to this community, it was a no-brainer. Let's figure out how do we do it? How do we leverage those resources? Because the best ideas, the best businesses, the best community movements are born in a place like this. These ideas are behind every one of these doors in these neighborhoods and now we want to give them the resources so they can take those dreams and chase them. If that dream is to start a business, if that dream is to improve their community, if that dream is just to make somebody's life better, we want to be part of it and this is the way that we can be part of it. I'm so excited about this step. Now, this is just one phase. We're going to continue to invest in the community, continue to invest in this center to build it to what it was dreamed of, which one day we started off with a small commercial kitchen, but really to have a true commercial kitchen and teaching center here as we tear down this old building on the back, what's the next phase there? What do we want to do there for our community? What can we use that resource for that really enhances and adds to our neighborhood and not subtract it? Thank you, Regina, for being here. I want to thank all our staff, our small business director over there, Ayesha Driggers, who does wonderful. If you don't know Ayesha, you better get to know her. She's the key to a lot of things and she's a lot of reason why we do a lot. Thank you staff for all that y'all do and for always being here for this community. It's very important that we continue to work together. Our new community development director is here. Thank you, ma'am, for being here. So excited that you're here. Ms. Wanda, always a pleasure to see you, but we're so excited about the opportunities and let's continue to work together to improve our community. Thank you. Good morning. What else can we say that brings and brings to each one of us that level of excitement for this resource center? One or two things that has taken place in this area called Book of Washington. A Rillizzant has taken place. New streets, proposed a new housing. The building on the other side of this building is being abated for asbestos. We've done a lot, but the work is not over yet. I wanted to thank our ACM, Henry Simon, our president, and I'll talk about her in just a few moments. And of course our mayor, who continues to be at the spears edge with developing communities that need development. This community represents a holistic approach to what's taking place in the city of Columbia. This resource center provides entrepreneurial endeavors to come into this place and to be filled with an entrepreneurial spirit that will sort of metastasize from this place to the other. Some have already said we need to name our resource center. Some has said, well, Ms. Belfill is there. What about the Sarah Nance Resource Center? And of course that has trickled down, but as you know. Thank you. Let the ushers come forward and take up the offer. There has been conversation about that possibility and renaming this building, the Sarah Nance Resource Center. But as you know, there is a process. There is a process that has to take place through our administrative policy committee as it relates to renaming buildings. We want to really make sure that that takes place. A new ball field, new streets, proposed new housing. My goodness, I think you ought to give yourselves a big hand. Give yourselves a big hand, Ms. President. We aren't through yet. And because we aren't through yet, greater possibilities stand the forefront of this renaissance area. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for being who you are. And guess what? The work is not over yet. Thank you all.