 Hello, Columbia, and welcome to City View, where we bring you an inside view of the city of Columbia. I'm your host, Lisha Yutzi. In our top story, recently, the Main Street District was lit up with a new canopy of lights in the 1600 block of Main Street. Ooh, it's another great day in Columbia, South Carolina. So excited for the holiday season, and, you know, tonight's gonna be special as we light up Main Street. Let me tell you, next year at this time, we're not only gonna be celebrating a lot of new businesses and a lot of great things that are coming forward 2023, but we're also gonna celebrate. We're gonna have things like a Christmas market. We're gonna decorate this town. We're gonna do things to get everybody in the holiday spirit next year. We've seen a lot of ideas and a lot of ideas coming in from our public to talk about how we could make Columbia more of a capital city Christmas, and I'm so excited that this is the beginning of our new business. Five, four, three, two, one. And now we go from Main Street to other hospitality districts in our city. There have been various business openings, ribbon cuttings, et cetera, throughout the city of Columbia. As we close out the year, we wanna share just a few of them with you that have occurred within the last month. What I learned about the story of the Abney family is this is more than just a fish market. It's passing down stories, traditions. It's passing generational wealth to the sun to start anew and create something in his own home, and that's exactly the type of stories that I wanna bring about and bring to light in this amazing city. It's really that there's opportunities here for everybody. We're so excited for this, for Bob's black-owned product. Because it's important that people understand that when a store invests and grows in a community, they're part of that community. We have to support them, and they're supporting us. They're gonna continue to grow and they're gonna bring a center of cultural awareness, art, history, and teaching our youth not to forget about our past, but don't spend your whole time looking in the rear view mirror, look at the windshield how we move forward together. Congratulations on the reopening. I like to call it a grand opening because it's about four times the size of your old store. And this is a blessing. Thank you very much to both of you for what you're doing in our community and your reinvestment here in North Carolina. We're excited to be here as we're celebrating the grand first anniversary opening. We didn't have an opportunity to celebrate the investment that the Hurlong family made here with their Midas location here on Duvay Street. As you can tell, they took some abandoned buildings and turned it into something really special here on Duvay Street, but also as they continue to do constantly as a family and as a business to get back to the community and they tied in this anniversary grand opening really into a way to get back with the blood drive. Congratulations to all the new business owners and entrepreneurs. And speaking of business, the Office of Business Opportunity has an exciting opportunity for all entrepreneurs and business owners in the new year. Two workshops are being offered starting in January. Next level and fast track. The City of Columbia Office of Business Opportunities is accepting applications for our 2023 next level and fast track entrepreneurial courses. These courses meet once a week for 10 weeks beginning the week of January 23rd. The courses are designed to assist new and existing businesses with key topics such as marketing analysis, business planning, operational strategies, and exploring financial options. The course also facilitates networking between entrepreneurs and experienced professionals. You can call us at 803-545-3950 for additional information or visit our website at obo.columbiasc.gov. Also during the month of January, the Community Development Department will be offering workshops for contractors. A series of workshops will be offered for local contractors during the month of January. These workshops are being offered by the Community Development Department. Workshops will be held in both January and February 2023. Registration is now open. Please visit our website at columbiasc.gov for additional details or you may call the Office for Community Development at 545-3373. It is now time to celebrate once again Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy. The City of Columbia and the MLK Memorial Foundation Committee will be hosting the Dr. Martin Luther King Day celebration on January 16th, 2023. The ceremony will be held at King Park and will begin at 4 p.m. For additional details regarding the ceremony, please visit our website at columbiasc.gov. You may also call the Parks and Recreation Department at 545-3100 or the Public Relations, Media and Marketing Department at 545-3020. Our Animal Services Division has announced the January Pet Adoption Special for January 2023. It's a new year, so why not adopt a new best friend from Columbia Animal Services? Pet adoptions for $23 only will begin on January 3rd and end on January 14th, 2023. You may contact Animal Services by visiting their location at 127 Humane Lane or by calling them at 803-776-7387. Also, you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram. Again, why not adopt a new best friend for the new year? As we close our program, we want to bring to you a heartwarming story from our Columbia Rich in the Fire Department. Chief Aubrey Jenkins and local firefighters recently held a food drive during the month of December to help those in need. It's firefighters feeding families. This is our third time during this year and I would say just last year we fed like 200 families. This year we're gonna be well-hitting about up to 300 bags that we've already packed. We still got some food left over that we're gonna be packing. But not only what we're gonna do with the families out there, but also because we do have an abundance left over. You know, I know we got firefighters that are working that day, so we're gonna try to get something for them as well for on Christmas Day. There's about everything there, like cereal, grits, you know, canned goods, dry goods, stuff of that nature. But we're also gonna be giving each person a whole chicken that goes along with it. So that is, you know, that's just something that we wanna do to make sure that everybody have a, at least have a good meal. There's enough in it for at least two meals plus a breakfast. So that's kind of what we wanna do this year. Just try to make everybody holiday just a little bit brighter. And some, yes, why we do this, cause we just wanna give back to the community. And this is just, in my opinion, just a very small way to give back to the community. Thank you to Chief Aubrey Jenkins and all of our local firefighters for hosting this food drive during the holiday season for local citizens. Thank you for watching City View. And as we close our program, please remember that any information regarding any of these stories can be found on our website, ecolumnsc.gov, or you may call the Public Relations Media and Marketing Department at 803-545-3020. You may also email us at PIO at columnsc.gov. Also connect with us on our streaming services on Roku and Amazon Fire TV, as well as our social media platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, as well as YouTube. We thank you for watching. And as always remember, we are Columbia.