 and we're delighted for your presence on today as we celebrate the official grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the sanctuary at Boyd Island. Thank you to our Mayor, Mayor Rickerman, all of our city council members present with us today. We are truly excited about what this means for our city. Many thanks to Miss Susan Boyd who's with us this morning. George Bailey, the president of our Boyd Foundation who you will hear from in a few minutes for their generosity. We're truly grateful for you, the Boyd Foundation, an entire board. We thank you for your contributions to the city. Many thanks to our city manager, Mr. Theresa Wilson who's here with us as well. This has certainly been a journey, but it's been worth waiting for, so we're grateful that we are at this point. This project will impact citizens from the city and abroad for years to come. Again, thank you for your presence this morning. We will proceed with the program in this order. You will hear from our Mayor, Daniel Rickerman, Councilman Will Brennan, John MacArthur with the River Alliance, George Bailey who is again the president of the Boyd Foundation, and yours truly will come back with some acknowledgments. Help me welcome our Mayor, Daniel Rickerman. Good morning. Thanks for everybody to be here. Just a little protocol. We've got a lot of elected officials here, our friends from Richland County, District 41 and from the House. Thank you for being here. Howard DeVall, our at-large member, Will Brennan behind me. Are there any other elected officials here? Mayor Parton, good to see you. How are you? Just excited that everybody's here today. I mean, it's pretty picturesque when you look here. And I remember back in college, we used to wade fish up here, come through here and always wondered how many people actually saw this piece of the stretch of the river because everybody else on it was hanging out of the rocks, taking care of some weedies in a bottle. But to that, you get the opportunity really to see the connectivity. And with the salute of starting North of Greenville 200 miles away, the broad 150 miles away in North Carolina and coming together to bring us to Congaree, it's an incredible place for Columbia. There's not a lot of places in America where you can come and be in the middle of a downtown and have this stretch of river that's connected but class two rapid Spanish moss. I don't know anywhere else in the state that has this kind of picturesque view as we have here. And I'm very thankful to the River Alliance for putting the boys in a canoe because if they hadn't gotten that canoe, we would be standing here today. And it's so exciting that we have this opportunity to be here to open up this sanctuary because I believe that's what it is. And I think when you get to see the artist there, Renee, thank you. I can't wait to see it all. I've gotten pictures from George along the way and very excited. Renee, this is the artist right here. I'll give her a hand. And the Boy Foundation worked with one Columbia to help bring this all together. So many different partners work together. But if it wasn't for the boys vision and their investment in the really the uplifting of our community, the projects from the zoo to the bridges to the island to the investment that they're making in each one. And I just want to take an opportunity to thank the Boy Family and the Foundation for your continued support of Columbia. We are on our way to be the number one city in South Carolina. Very excited about that. And I believe that the traveled leisure pretty much told everybody this is the place to live. If you haven't read that article, I would encourage you to read it. We're so excited about it. But I just want to thank our staff too, our Parks and Rec staff for buying and believing and supporting and standing behind this project. Because this started in 2014, right, John? Am I right? 2014. And here we are today with this wonderful opening. With that, I want to turn it over to Will Brennan to say a few words. Thank you. What a wonderful, beautiful day to come celebrate something that has been in the works for a long, long time. You know, Mr. Dawson, you probably don't remember this, but when I worked at the River Alliance for you 20 years ago, we used to go stomping around out there talking about that big, beautiful master plan. Here we are 20 years later, it's coming together. It's coming together because of several things. Here, the city and the county is so important that we initiate public-private partnerships. We could not be here today if it wasn't for our county council, our county commitments to make opportunities for recreation along our river a priority. So to our county friends here today, thank you so much for your efforts and your continued effort. We have a couple more miles to get and we're gonna get there. I feel good about that. But it is a great day. I always love ribbon cuttings with Miss Boyd and the Boyd Foundation. You mean so much to this city. We would not be experiencing the great things we are without your commitment, Mr. Bailey. Thank you for looking at our list of needs and wants and desires and helping us work through them. You're making Columbia a great place. You're making the Midlands a great place and the State of South Carolina a great place. So with that, thank you again for coming out and I'm excited to get to the island. Good morning. I am John MacArthur, Chair of the River Alliance and the River Alliance is actually an entity that was formed back 27, 28 years ago by two counties and three cities and a bunch of stakeholders who had a dream to have river walks both sides of the river connecting people to the river. Fortunately, in that first instance and through now, Mike Dawson has been our Executive Director. And one of Mike's functions has been to go around and speak to people and get them excited about the river walk. Years ago, I believe he was speaking that Susan Boyd's Garden Club, I believe it was, but anyhow, Mike and Susan got together and the next step was they came right here and Donald and Susan and Mike rode a canoe over there and walked around and that is the reason we're here today. That sparked that interest in the Boyd Foundation. And from there, the Foundation worked with the Boyds and their board through a very complicated set of permitting to build a bridge over Federal Waterway to design the walkway to get the sculpture in the arc. And that was also tied in to the Saluta Greenway being finished. We couldn't have this without the Saluta Greenway. So the penny tax was also essential to this happening because this three miles of Greenway was funded by the penny tax. So when the permitting was done, construction started, the Boyd's commitment at that point, the Boyd Foundation's commitment was up to $500,000. And as the project grew and they saw the possibilities, Susan and the Boyd got interested in art and making it a special place, art that reflected the natural beauty of the place, the flora and the fauna. So eventually we have what you'll see when you tour over here is a pagoda that is an inverted steel, inverted emblem of a spider lily. You'll see terrific seating areas that are pieces of art in themselves. You'll see Renee's sculptures. There's a bobcat on a rock over here. I was taking some log clerks on a tour this summer. One of them had their dog. The dog looked at that bobtail on the rock and went nuts because it looks that real. So this is just a wonderful place and it's all due to the vision and the generosity of the Boyd Foundation. So I just want to thank y'all. Some other people I would like to thank. Charles Howell and the land plan group South, they designed the land plan for the island. Carol Barker, who's here, he helped us tremendously with the permitting. He's an expert in hydrology and permitting and building things across waterways as well as other things. Our contractors were contact, Cape Romain Construction and Advanced Outdoor Services. Chris Stipe built the beautiful pagoda. Chris, here, here, raise your hand. Back here in the back. And Renee Bemis designs some of the other sculpture there. Renee, raise your hand. Thank you so much. Give these folks a hand. I want to thank the city of Columbia for undertaking to own and operate this. That commitment started when Mike Boyd, Mike Dawson and I took former Mayor Steve Benjamin and Parks and Recreation Director Randy Davis and some of his staff and some other folks from the city. We got on kayaks right here and rode over there and had a big time and they saw the dream and were very enthusiastic about it. And they've worked all the way through to help get this done. So thank you. Thank you to former Mayor Steve Benjamin, Mayor Daniel Rickman, two River Alliance Board Board members, Howard DeVall and Will Brennan, who have just been dedicated to helping this get to happen, and all the other members of the council, to Teresa, the Wilson, the city manager, and all the staff who've done so much to make this happen. Also, Henry Simons, who is here today, has been really the contact point for Mike and the foundation in working with the city. Thank you also to Overture Walker, Chair of Richmond County Council, council member and former chair, and also a board member, a long-time little board member, Paul Livingston, and other council members. Thank you also to County Manager Leonardo Brown and Richmond County staff. Again, the Greenway itself was essential to doing Board Island, they go together. I want to thank our River Alliance Board members who have been very supportive and involved in keeping this going for now 27, 28 years. What's next? Many of you probably already know this, but phase two of this little Greenway goes right down past that boardwalk, keeps going, goes under the I-26 bridge and the railroad track, goes up the Braw River a couple of hundred yards, and then we'll have a beautiful bridge that goes across the broad and connects where we are now to downtown by running across the broad to the Canal Riverwalk. That project is being funded. The walkway to get from here to the bridge is being funded by Richmond County on the remaining penny tax money. And then the Boy Foundation, again, extremely generous. They're making things happen in the Midlands and just one of them, but they are funding the bridge, which would be a beautiful pedestrian bridge across the river. And they'll have little lookout spots. You can go out on the river and just stop and look for a while. And we'll connect not only downtown, the parts of Northern Columbia, to this area we're in now. So you'll be able to walk from Braw River Road and end up two miles upstream of the zoo. It's really going to be amazing. So thank you so much. And I look forward to y'all coming over here and seeing what's here. Good morning, everyone. The mayor and John had stolen a little bit of my thunder. So I might be duplicating to some degree some of the things they've said, but it's been our pleasure to partner with the River Alliance, Richardson County, the city of Columbia, and one Columbia for arts and culture to make this sanctuary at Boyd Island happen. As was said, Mike Dawson brought Susan and Donnie Boyd down to see the island almost 10 years ago. It's taken that long to finally get to this point. So we're so glad to be here. We, from there, we were part of implementing the vision of Oz Nagler and Charles Howell as far as the bridge and the paths, et cetera, through the island. Working with one Columbia, we engage Renee Bemis as our sculptorist. She's prepared three wonderful pieces on the island and we hope to get her to do some additional pieces for us. Working with the River Alliance and Charles Howell, we engage our sculptor, Chris Stike, to prepare the pavilion, which has been said is really designed to be an inverted spider lily bloom. Chris also designed the tables and the trash cans that are there on the island. So we're glad to be a part of all of this and we look forward to doing more for Columbia. I'd like to recognize our board members who are here today, starting with Susan Boyd, Taylor Boyd, Taylor Brachahan. Joe Wachewski, Ford Bailey, Marybond Quinn, we've got Johnson O'Donnell Bailey, Johnson Small, Walter Taylor. I think that's everybody. So we've got the vast majority of our board here. So, I'll play. I think we can do better than that. Let's give the board foundation a huge thank you. Absolutely. But what really got me going was when I had to cross the water with my feet. And he told me what this was going to be. And I looked at him and I think I thought he was crazy. But as things moved along, they became more real. But truly, the first time I hit this water was really invigorating. I'll put it that way. And we were always crossing waters and it was always a lot of fun. And to see it change has just been amazing. I went to church one day and this lady came up to me and said to me, you know, somebody took me out there to see the hour and stuff. And I went to the house, the beautiful, beautiful house. And it was so beautiful, it made me cry. Well, I had never heard that one before. But it sounded good. So I've had a lot of time out here some in the water and some walking around. And I had a lot and I was looking forward to seeing all of you out here sometime. And you might be walking in water and you just have to put up with it.