Downtown Columbia’s Finlay Park will finally reopen this November.
After being closed for years, first due to disrepair and then to make way for sweeping improvements, the city announced Friday that it will host a grand re-opening event on Nov. 15 to celebrate the park’s more-than-$24 million transformation.
For more than a decade, the once beloved park near the center of downtown Columbia has left a lot to be desired. The park’s centerpiece, a 27-foot spiral fountain, had been dry since at least 2015, and the park’s amenities fell into disrepair.
City leaders have since at least 2019 been talking about what to do about the languishing property, which stretches across the space between Taylor and Laurel streets, nearly at the center of the city’s downtown grid.
In 2023, they broke ground on a construction project that promised the restoration of the iconic fountain, the addition of “strolling gardens,” new event space, playground equipment and more. And the process also included cost increases: rising from an estimated $18 million when first pitched in 2019, to $21.5 million by 2022, to now more than $24 million as the work nears completion…