Brian Lawrence Live

Thursday, Oct. 2
A crowd of 1,000 was expected at tonight’s grand opening party at the new downtown Hilton, and we arrived around 7:30 to join the festivities. The lovely Tracy Kwiatkowski and Tiffany Zappulla were on hand, and I spoke with The Sun‘s Sloane Brown and with SunTrust’s Susan Garabedian. I also ran into Eddie Applefeld, Travis Wright and Barb Clapp, whose PR agency planned the evening. Aside from fun music and some great food, there was a special surprise in store: hometown Olympian Michael Phelps put in a brief appearance.