FLORENCE, SC (WBTW) – While many will travel to the Grand Strand for New Year’s Eve celebrations, Myrtle Beach isn’t alone as far as destinations.
All day Thursday, restaurants in downtown Florence also prepared for the celebration.
Downtown Florence will host its first ever New Year’s Eve block party, along with a masquerade ball.
“New Year’s Eve, there are a lot of other cities that do this. We need to provide something, a destination for people to go on New Year’s and it doesn’t seem to be one in Florence,” said Cooper Thomas, General Manager and Executive Chef at Victor’s Bistro.
Both Victor’s Bistro and the restaurants on Restaurant Row on South Dargan Street are putting together these events tonight.
This is actually the second straight year that Restaurant Row has put on a party for New Year’s Eve, with nearly 600 people attending last year.
This year they will host the masquerade ball in the back courtyard area.
“Yea, we’ve been preparing for about a week…We’ve renovated the patio, we basically gave ourselves some more space. [We] brought in some great heater so everyone can be warm and dry. We are trying to do New Year’s in a big way downtown this year,” said Xzaviar Boston with 1031 American Grill.
“I think the whole idea was that we want to raise awareness of what’s going on downtown. So we kind of came together as a business community down here and try to say what can we do to get more people to come down to see what’s happening,” explained Thomas.
Even with the wet weather, it doesn’t expect to rain on their parade.
“we are pretty much going to tent the whole block. As much as the block as we can,” Thomas stated.
The block party kicks off at 9:00 p.m. and the masquerade ball will also be underway as well.
For info on tonight’s events, click here on head to masquerade ball’s Facebook page.
