Alecia Morgan The Main Street Market - the outdoors bazaar held in the piazza shared by the Columbia Museum of Art and the office building achored by Carolina First Bank - gets larger with more visitors each season. Open only on Fridays, the average visitor count is about 1,000 each Friday, but when the CMA had the Turner to Cezanne Exhibition, the visitor count ran about 2,000 each Friday. The street market is a fall and spring thing, staying away from winter's bitter cold and summer's searing heat.

There from the beginning, conceptualizing the Main Street Market since 2005, Alecia Morgan and her employer Carter Todd Associates have a winner.

Morgan was born in downtown's Baptist Hospital. Her father managed deliveries in the food service business, mostly for Lance and Frito- Lay.

Two years after she was born, Morgan gained a younger brother, Matthew. He recently graduated from college with a degree in media arts, specializing in graphics. He is a store manager for Sherwin- Williams in Irmo.

About the time she turned six years of age, Morgan moved with her mother and her brother to Heath Springs in Lancaster County to be near her mother's parents. Morgan entered Heath Springs Elementary. She moved up to Andrew Jackson Middle School, where she took an interest in cheerleading. She made the all- star cheerleading squad, and she went with the all- stars to Orlando to participate in the Thanksgiving Parade.

Morgan stayed with cheerleading through her junior year in high school, but academics were too important for her to take the time for cheerleading in her senior year.

She entered USC- Lancaster as a freshman and finished in two years with an associate's arts degree. Morgan came to Columbia the next year as a college junior at USC, planning to be an elementary school teacher. She shifted her major first to English and then to theater, while a move to general studies with an emphasis on business courses kept her attention until she signed up for a public relations major. She earned her degree in mass communications.

In her last year at USC, Morgan worked with the Bateman Team, part of a national PR and advertising competition that was something of a full- time job for three months.

For spending money during college in Columbia, Morgan worked for Dick Dyer Toyota on Two Notch Road. She also interned as a student at Carter Todd Associates, the advertizing and PR firm on the ground floor at 1233 Washington Street.

After graduation, Morgan left for Stuart, Fla. and a non- profit called the Treasure Coast Wildlife Center. For TCWC Morgan organized a fund- raising golf tournament that brought in $55,000 for the TCWC building fund.

Carter Todd asked Morgan to return to Columbia to fill a slot as an account executive. Besides the Main Street Market, Morgan is also responsible for the City Center Partnership's Urban Tour.

At the most recent version, last May 7, Morgan pulled in about 3,000 visitors for the 5- 8:30 pm walk- through among the Main Street residences and their adjacent retail and restaurant spaces. Of course, the complimentary food and drink helped in attracting the crowds, as did the live musical entertainment.

Morgan works with Capitol Places, one of Main Street's major developers, and they study together other similar downtown promotional efforts among cities throughout the South.

Thanks to Morgan's and the CCP's efforts last year to boost the World Beer Festival at the convention center, the World Beer Festival returns this January.

Morgan and Carter Todd are also in the magazine

business, Columbia

Home and Garden. With about 10,000 copies distributed around greater Columbia, the magazine is a quarterly likely to grow into a monthly.

After about a year and a half in a Tapp's Building apartment, Morgan recently moved into a West Columbia house with a yard more suitable for her dog Chloe. Roughly mid-way between where she lives and where she works, Morgan regularly visits her favorite workout venue, Brickhouse, near the corner of Huger Street and Blossom Street. It's a habit she started at the Tapp's Building when the Athlete Factory had the ground floor.