COLUMBIA, S.C. — Columbia has landed in the top five for 2024 cities on the rise. Each year, Southern Living Magazine selects 25 of the best southern cities; this year, the Famously Hot City made the list.
Edie Enright agrees with that ranking. She's a new small business owner in Columbia and said the city has welcomed her with open arms.
"To me this feels a little bit like home," Edie Enright said. "I just love the Southern hospitality. It's always been very welcoming here. some really good people here, very good people."
From restaurants to the arts, nature, and downtown districts, Columbia is being recognized for all it offers.
"For a long time, we would hear the opposite—people say there's not a whole lot going on in Columbia, and we are seeing that shift," said Kelly Barbrey, the vice president of Marketing and Communications at Experience Columbia SC.
"We are seeing people absolutely loving our restaurant scene , our brewery scene, we have tons of new breweries and old favorites that are just staples of both residents and visitors, people coming to the community."
To get their ranking, Southern Living Magazine polled over 20,000 readers to select the top 25.
"We landed on their short list," said Danya Cantelmi, Communications Manager at Experience Columbia. "From there they put their list of cities into a survey and the readers of Southern Living took it from there, this was a completely readers choice vote."
Experience Columbia officials said this recognition has been coming for a long time.
"We just had our highest tourism year yet in 2022 - 15.8 million visitors came into our community in 2022," Barbrey said. "Prior to that, our highest year was 2019, before COVID."
Although Columbia is becoming a big tourist attraction, neighbors said they wouldn't want to live elsewhere.
"It's fun; there's generally a good amount of things to do, not in an overwhelming way of course," said Caitlin Cameron, who lives in Columbia. "I can walk down to Five Points and look around and see what's going on and find something to do."
Wilson Bames has called Columbia home for 20 years.
"There's constantly an influx of new people, new ideas and new opportunities to learn about your community and to really just enjoy the city," he said.
City officials said this is only the beginning.
"This list kind of hints that we're up and coming, but we've really arrived," Barbrey said. "I think spreading the word to show people that we really have all of these things we have these wonderful assets that they can enjoy and those will continue."