Our second visit to the new Cigar Factory was to provide audio visual rentals at The Cedar Room for the Charleston Convention and Visitors Bureau September Investor Partners meeting. It was another great opportunity to get to know the newly opened conference, meeting, and wedding space called The Cedar Room which you see here.

The Charleston CVB is a robust and vibrant organization managed by the city, which can be credited with supporting so much of Charleston’s growth over the past twenty years. Retail, hospitality, and business partners are all included in monthly discussions regarding the direction the city will take, new laws and ordinances, and shared educational opportunities to further increase members revenue and Charleston’s health in turn.

Forty years ago, Charleston was a struggling city of the South. Organizations like CVB had a major hand in the recovery and remain at the fore in gaining international attention for Charleston in every sense. The CVB attracts many national conferences each year, national sporting events, new businesses and corporations, and a great deal of event traffic to the Holy City. AV Connections is both an AV partner for these meetings and events and a proud investor in Charleston.

We encourage all businesses in Charleston to join us at these monthly gatherings to learn and share. Together, we better a city worth every ounce of effort to support. We are proud to be a family owned local business and always proud to be in business with the CVB.

This past month, AV Connections had the pleasure of providing awards banquet lighting rentals at South Carolina Aquarium for the Lifetime Award presentation gala of the Greater Charleston Restaurant Association. South Carolina’s soaring and magnificent palace of sea life is available for private events. The SC Aquarium welcomes weddings, conferences, holiday parties, and school gatherings. AV Connections is always pleased to get the call for a job at the Aquarium. There are few better places which take to event lighting so impressively. The Aquarium, located off East Bay in Charleston on the Ashley River Waterfront offers all the best in an event location: Stunning views, plenty of parking, and close proximity to all of Charleston’s great hotels and sites. It is perfect appointed and the most memorable of Charleston’s waterfront venues.

No organization is better suited to hold an Awards dinner than this association, made up of Charleston’s greatest food industry stars, the membership is a who’s-who of the finest food professionals Charleston has to offer. The mix of organization and venue were sure to make for a perfect night.

We provided the audiovisual for this award presentation. And what a pleasure it was to help honor Franz Meier who is credited with creating the European backbone of Charleston cuisine during his tenure at Charleston’s historic Colony House, now the Harbor Club. Mr. Meier would go on to own and oversee some of the most important food and wine destinations in the Low Country, amassing a forty year legacy of fine food for Charleston. We heartily congratulate Mr. Meier and are so glad to have been able to witness this remarkable achievement.

AV Connections was floored to set out on our first job to provide AV rentals at Cigar Factory Charleston. A national lifestyle magazine which is headquartered here in Charleston, SC held their national sales meeting in the newly completed Cedar Room at the Cigar Factory. We were thrilled to see this new space. What an incredible new conference, meeting, and wedding space has been created in this beautiful old structure on the East Bay Cooper River waterfront of the Charleston peninsula!

THEN:

NOW:

Such a well-known landmark of the Charleston city facade, the Cigar Factory sadly sat empty and largely abandoned for generations. Constructed of hand crafted American brick in 1882, the Cigar Factory was first a cotton mill. In 1913 it became the American Cigar Factory and in 1930’s was the largest private employer in Charleston. Economic decline and a culture stepping away from tobacco products caused the business to slow and eventually, the Cigar Factory was shuttered.

Nearly forty years and a number of development plans went by before this beautiful renovation of our modern age was completed on this precious Charleston structure. We are full of pride that Charleston is home to this remarkable commercial enterprise which now houses a number of corporate offices, as well as the conference and wedding venue you see above, The Cedar Room. Where we once drove by a silent American factory, we are now called to provide audiovisual and wedding lighting in this reawakened monument to Charleston’s industrial period.

AV Connections is happy to provide AV and event lighting for your conference, meeting, banquet, gala, or wedding at The Cigar Factory. Call us for an estimate.