The 10th annual Best of Springfield Awards for 2024 saw much jubilation as community members and business owners gathered to celebrate what makes Springfield so remarkable. The ceremony took place on the evening of Thursday, Oct. 10, just ten days after the 4th quarter of the fiscal year closed out. The occasion first began in 2015 by the Chamber of Greater Springfield in their “Best Of” magazine, meant to point visitors and residents towards the hot spots in the area.
With 80 categories assessed, approximately 180,000 votes were collected leading up to the event. This observance is meant to shine a light on the locally-owned businesses in the city, and distribute accolades where the community sees fit. This year the Best of Springfield Awards took place at the Hollenbeck Bayley Creative Arts and Conference Center, and welcomed back Urbana native, and magician, Michael Kent as the Master of Ceremonies. Congratulations to all winners and nominees, celebrating each other is what makes Springfield strong.
Mike McDorman, President and CEO of the Greater Springfield Partnership speaks on the theme of this year’s affair in the latest edition of their publication, saying: “The Greater Springfield Partnership team’s theme for this year is ‘Believe!’ We ripped it off from the popular comedy series ‘Ted Lasso,’ a show about an American football coach hired to coach an English soccer team whose owner secretly wants the team to fail. This scenario should remind us how hard it is to be THE BEST of Springfield in our business, as a Chamber of Commerce and as a community trying to move forward in a very competitive environment. Like Ted Lasso, we must ‘Believe’ before we can move forward…”
The Best of Springfield Awards is brought to you by The Greater Springfield Partnership and the Springfield News-Sun. To see the complete list of this year's winners please visit Springfield News-Sun @
Best of Springfield: All winners and finalists 2024
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