Elyria Festival of Lights - Saturday, December 2, 2017!

Bring Bring the entire family and join the City of Elyria and our partners for a fun-filled day of holiday events and activities designed to bring a smile to every age. All offerings in Ely Square, Elyria City Hall and Finwood Estate

are FREE and open to the public and are being made possible through the generous donations of individuals and organizations and the FindleyTrust. This year’s celebration will bring back many of the traditions you remember from the past, including the children’s petting zoo complete with A GENUINE REINDEER! Events will start at Elyria City Hall at 3:00pm with crafts, caroling, movies, a caricature artist, free gift bags for the first 500 children and Mayor Brinda’s FREE Storybook Giveaway!
Grace Community Church will once again be providing free outerwear for children and adults inside City Hall, and the Elyria ArtWorks on Broad Street will be open until 5:00pm for you to browse the works of local artists!

Downtown Elyria Events

2:00-5:00pm

• Ice Sculpting - Watch a sculptor transform a block of ice into a holiday sculpture before your eyes!

3:00-5:00pm

• **FREE GIFT BAGS:TOTHE FIRST 500 CHILDREN!**


• Kids Crafts - Make a holiday craft in City Hall


• Kids Holiday Movies - Warm up in City Hall to watch some classic holiday movies and specials!


• Caricature Artist - Add some cheer to your holiday with a free caricature portrait of your children or your whole family!

Mayor Brinda’s Storybook Giveaway

• The first 500 children will receive their choice of a FREE book courtesy of the Mayor!

3:00-6:00pm

• Children’s Petting Zoo - Ely Square will come alive with real animals for your child’s petting pleasure, including: a camel, pygmy goats, a yak, Shetland sheep, alpacas and A REAL REINDEER!
• Caroling & Group Performances: Hear the joyous sounds of the season from a variety of choral, dance and music groups!
• StoryTime - Meet The GrinchWho Stole Christmas: The Elyria Public Library shares some holiday classics and your favorite holiday characters will be in Ely Square and City Hall

3:00pm

• Coat, Scarf, Hat & Glove Giveaway - Grace Community Church will be providing free outerwear for children, youth and adults in Elyria City Hall
  

5:00-5:30pm - Santa's Arrival!
5:30-7:00pm - Meet Santa in the Sunrise Rotary Santa House on Ely Square!


11:00am-5:00pm

•  The Elyria Arts Council Gallery- 336 Broad Street – locals artists and craftspeople will display artwork, jewelry, crafts and sculptures for display and sale!

Holiday at Finwood Estate Events (799 N. Abbe by LCCC)

6:00-9:00pm: December 1 thru December 23 - (drive-thru through January 2)


North Park Ice Arena Events

December 3rd - 901 Duffy St.

1:00 – 3:00pm & 7:00 - 9:00pm: Open Skate: Youth $3, Adults $4, Skate Rental $3

See flyer below for more details!

Click to embiggen!

Small Business Saturday in Elyria - November 25, 2017!

There is really no better way to follow up Black Friday than with Small Business Saturday! Invest Elyria is once again hosting Small Business Saturday on November 25th for local small businesses in Elyria.  There are 25 businesses participating this year with 21 offering specials, discounts and/or drawings to win items ranging from grills, gift baskets, and gift cards, to ornaments, holiday decor and a $50 shopping spree!  More importantly, you'll be supporting local, homegrown businesses!


IE is excited that there are 8 new businesses joining them this year with 5 of them located downtown. To see what each business is offering, visit the Invest Elyria website here!  A list of participating businesses is below:

Elyria Documentary Discs Now Available for Purchase!

The City of Elyria celebrated 200 years in 2017, and now you can share an entire years' worth of events, hometown pride, and history with your friends and family!  DVDs and Bluray discs of the documentary "Elyria: Making History, Then and Now!" are now available for order!  Created by award-winning filmmaker Jakob Hochendoner and present by the Beckett Companies, the documentary covers everything from the founding of our great City to the great people living here today!  Each Disc also contains footage from all of the great events throughout 2017.
 


More information is below (or click here for an order form you can fill out and return), or you can visit our website and place an order online.  The prices ($6.00 for the DVD and $8.00 for the BluRay include shipping.  You can also visit the Mayor Office (131 Court Street, Suite 301, Elyria, Ohio 44035) to purchase in person.  Feel free to call our office with any questions.

Happy Thanksgiving from the City of Elyria!

Another year has passed, and on behalf of the City of Elyria and all of our employees, we would like to express our most sincere thanks to you the citizens, for your support during this special season and all year long. As we wrap up a very successful Bicentennial year, it is easy to remember how fortunate we are to live and work in this caring community, and we know that you are the reason we as public servants exist.  I’d also like you to know that those who serve the public in Elyria do it with care, compassion, enthusiasm and great humility.  I feel privileged to work with great, hard-working City of Elyria employees every day, and we feel that same privilege serving the proud, hard-working citizens of Elyria.

The Holidays are just beginning, and I wish you all a wonderful season full of joy, hope, peace and some well-earned time with the people most important to you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

ELYRIA RESIDENT ALERT FROM THE CITY:

There will be a temporary electric power outage from approximately 5:00pm to 8:00pm THIS EVENING, NOVEMBER 15 for residents in Elyria who live in the following areas:

• 200 – 800 block of East Avenue
• All side streets between 200 – 800 blocks of East Avenue, running between East Ave. and Middle Ave.
• 200 – 800 block of Middle Avenue

This is necessary to accommodate an emergency gas main repair.  Residents are asked to shelter in place, and avoid unnecessary travel or activities outside their homes.       

Bicentennial Time Capsule Dedication - November 14 @ 1:00pm in Ely Square!

This is a friendly reminder that the last of a series of great events through our Bicentennial year of 2017 will be held on Tuesday, November 14th at 1:00pm in Ely Square.  Mayor Brinda, Bicentennial Co-Chair Bill Bird and our Bicentennial Committee will dedicate the Bicentennial Time Capsule.  It will include photos from 2017, including all of our events, letters from our elected officials and residents, mementos and photos from throughout year, and some items to represent 2017.  Anyone who would still like to include a letter has a very small window to get it in to us, as we will try to leave one of the bags to into the capsule unsealed until right before the ceremony.

We hope to see you at 1:00pm on November 14 in Ely Square!  As always, call the Mayor's Office at 440-326-1402 with any questions.

Be Part of the Elyria Bicentennial Time Capsule!

One hundred years from now, the Elyrians of 2117 will be celebrating our City's Tricentennial, and part of those festivities will be the opening of a time capsule from the year 2017.  We have been collecting memories and mementos from the tremendous Bicentennial celebrations throughout this year (along with other items to represent 2017), but we would like to add something that really represents not just Elyria, but the proud Elyrians of 2017. We would love to include your actual words,  thoughts and messages for future generations to read.

Send us your thoughts of today, hopes for the future, messages to future Elyria, or any other family-friendly BRIEF statements via facebook (Elyria Citizens page here or #ELY200 page here) or twitter (@MayorBrinda using the hasthtag #ELY200) and we'll include them in the time capsule!  We're going to bury the capsule on November 14, so if you want to be part of the celebration this year and 100 years from now, get us your thoughts soon!


Twitter has a character limit of 140 characters, so if even if you're not using Twitter, we would like you to keep it to a few sentences.