Hahira Honey Bee festivities starting this week

Published 11:38 pm Sunday, October 1, 2006

If you are looking for something to do this week, especially if you have small children who would love to watch a great parade, then visit Hahira for their annual Honey Bee Festival.

The festival begins tomorrow with festivities all week long. The Honey Queen will be in town this week, there are two nights of beauty pageants, and the arts and crafts festival downtown, along with entertainment, starts Friday and continues through Saturday night.

Thousands attend the annual parade, set for 2 p.m. on Saturday, with the largest contingent of Shriners at any parade in the South. Floats, bands, local dignitaries, and organizations are all a part of the parade, which runs along Main St. Hahira has managed to hold on to the tradition of candy throwing from the cars and floats, and kids love the Shriner cars and dune buggys.

It’s a great family event, a wonderful way to spend a day or two, and is a reminder of all of the reasons why small cities continue to thrive in this region.

Business Roundup

For those who missed it last week, the Wooden Nickel Pub is open and all of the old favorite menu items are back, along with many of the former employees. And for those of you who have asked me for the past six months about it, yes, you can now get your camel rider.

I was given a tour this week of Adel/Cook County to see all the new administration buildings, new businesses, etc. We’ll be using the information in several articles soon, but it’s amazing and impressive all that they have going on. It helps that the community is blessed with strong, cooperative leadership, but that’s a topic for a future editorial.

I made a mistake in last Sunday’s column. When a store employee told me that Walgreens was opening Friday, I assumed he meant of that week, but it’s actually not opening until this Friday, Oct. 6.

To make sure I got the information correct about all of the Williams’ new properties, they sent me an e-mail this week explaining all of their projects. The six-story Holiday Inn at Exit 16 has 160 rooms and suites and will open in January. The hotel will have a restaurant, lounge, room service, banquet room, conference room, etc.

The four-story Comfort Suites at Exit 18 will open in February with 90 rooms and meeting facilities, etc., and at Exit 22, the new Burger King and Citgo to replace the existing ones at the Days Inn are under construction and should be open by the end of the year. The existing Burger King will become a new restaurant, although they don’t know yet what it will be.

There is a new chocolate shop in Remerton which just opened, and also in Remerton, I understand that the Toads and Teacups shop has recently expanded.

The biggest news of the week is the Kohl’s grand opening ceremony on Thursday, Oct. 5, at 7:30 a.m. Other good news is that Talbots has announced their new store by Jos. A. Bank at Colonial Mall will open Friday, Oct. 27, at 10 a.m.

That’s it for this week, but if I missed anything, please let me know.