Columbia’s year ahead in arts and entertainment

Key Dates: Festivals and Events

Here in the Midlands, we love festivals where food and drink are front and center. While many organizations are still setting 2016 event dates, we’ve included months or, when known, specific dates for some of the popular ones.

March 19

St. Pat’s in Five Points

May

Rosewood Crawfish Festival

July 4

S.C. Peach Festival

September

Greek Festival

October

Italian Festival

Oct. 12-23

State Fair

November

Five Points Chili Cookoff

Big step ahead for Northeast Richland water park

The dream of a Columbia water park that will serve as a regional tourist destination in Northeast Richland will take a step closer to reality in 2016.

Richland County Council gave the OK last month to execute a $20 million contract for design, construction and operation for the facility. The public will learn more about the park – including the firm that will design and build the facility at Hard Scrabble and Farrow roads, near Interstate 77 – early this year.

But while council already has set aside $5 million for the project from current hospitality tax reserves, the question of how to fully fund the water park is still up in the air.

The facility, which could open around Memorial Day in 2017, will include a wave pool, lazy river, tube slide complex, children’s activity complex and event pavilion, Richland County capital projects program manager Chad Fosnight said.

“If we’re attracting world-class people and companies to our state and our county, we’ve got to have the amenities to compete with other areas,” County Council Chairman Torrey Rush has said.

Janet Jones Kendall

A new book festival and expanded cultural facilities

Cultural offerings will get a boost in the new year.

A new book festival comes to the capital city in February, thanks to local writers Annie Boiter-Jolley and Darien Cavanaugh.

Boiter-Jolley and Cavanaugh developed the idea for the festival – named Deckle Edge after the rough, uncut edges of paper formed by the deckle device in a paper-making machine – when the Humanities Council SC announced last year it would dissolve the 17-year-old S.C. Book Festival in favor of smaller events around the state.

The inaugural Deckle Edge Book Festival will be held Feb. 19-21 in multiple venues across Columbia, including the Columbia Museum of Art, Historic Columbia, Richland Library, Tapp’s Art Center and 1208 Washington Place.

At least two other cultural facilities will be working on expansions in 2016.

The Columbia Museum of Art has raised more than $13 million of a $16 million goal for an expansion that would add a new entrance, lobby, and more gallery and education space. No timetable has been announced publicly for the work.

Meanwhile, Richland Library continues to expand its reach beyond books, to become a gathering place for the community with space improvements at many branches. Construction begins in February at the Cooper branch on Trenholm Road, while work got under way in 2015 on other facilities, among them North Main and Main.

Janet Jones Kendall

This story was originally published January 2, 2016 at 7:18 PM with the headline "Columbia’s year ahead in arts and entertainment."