Experience Columbia won Festival South's Best of the Pine Belt award for Best Local Event, and Southern Tire Mart won for Best Auto Accessories. EC also won Mississippi Magazine's Best Holiday Attraction for the entire state. This year, several nominees were from Columbia and a few actually made it to the finals. Luxe & Sweet Productions, owned by Juanita Stovall, was nominated for Best Dessert and made it to the finals, and St. Luke Home Health made it to the finals for Best Home Health.
EC beat out such well-known attractions as HUBFEST, Live at Five, Zoo Boo and Hattiesburg Zoo Lights of the Wild.
"I am shocked we ended up in the top five in a Hattiesburg vote. We are super excited about getting the award. It puts us on the map. It will bring businesses to Columbia and get people to move here," Laura Hobgood of Experience Columbia said. "We did not just win this award. The face of the event is the community. It was a group effort."
Hobgood and Jacob Harrison are the only ones left that started with the group five years ago when they only did the light show.
"Our event is growing regionally,: Harrison said. "Our overarching goal is to improve the community so people can live here, raise a family and the kids can stay here."
The city contracted Looks Great Services to do the lights at Christmas. Suddenly, it was a big deal and all of the liability was on Looks Great Services. A business was created just for the holiday celebration. The group named it Experience Columbia because people came for the experience.
The group said all of the fun activities will be back this year, including making it snow on Main Street, which was an unexpected success last year.
It is working on some new things for this year to make it an even bigger success.
