Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Yesternight Distilery moved into the old Abolute Discount Mattress space on 11 February 2017 according to commenter James R, having relocated from the The Old Mill after being gutted by the flood of 2015. It seems to me that over the last several years, I have seen a number of "Moonshine" stores open, something I had never seen before that. I don't know if there was some sort of law change that made it easier, or if it is just one of those retail trends. At any rate, Yesternight is now closed, though they apparently are still looking into reopening elsewhere.

I noticed something about this property when I looked for the address. It shares the street number "4884" with the small strip mall containing Lexington Pawn & Gun. I had always assumed they were separate properties, but apparently not.

(Hat tip to commener James R)

Well, a number of people have mentioned this place recently, and for that matter going back a good while, but for some reason, I just recently got around to visiting. It's quite a large and interesting property that is currently going to pot. I see from the real estate sign and LoopNet listing that it *is* on the market, but for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be moving. Maybe $2,000,000 is just too much, though as I said it is a big property.

As nearly as I can tell based on this Facebook page, Hampton closed at some point between December 2013 and February 2014. In fact, we can corroborate with the Internet Wayback Machine, noting that the Hampton web site was up on 24 December 2013 and gone by 22 February 2014. (As an aside, it seems that phonebooks are less and less help for this sort of thing lately. For some reason the current Feb 2017 phonebook still has an active listing for Hampton..)

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As mentioned by commenter Justin, and documented in this sale notice here, Hannah Piano in Seven Oaks Shopping Center is closing after 42 years as the owners are retiring.

The Liquidation Sale will offer new and used pianos of all sizes, finishes, and price ranges, digital pianos and all print music. Deep discounts will be offered over the coming weeks and the store will close their doors when everything is sold.

Unfortunately, the keyboard under my fingers now is the only kind I ever had an affinity for..

(Hat tip to commenter Justin)

UPDATE 23 March 2018 -- The closeout is over and the place is now closed:

As mentioned in the comments by several people, Burlington Coat Factory is closing their Columbia Mall store to relocate to a newly built building at Village At Sandhill. The final sale has now started.

Burlington occupied the first floor of the former Columbia Mall J C Penny location after Penny's itself moved to Sandhill (I don't appear to have done a closing for that for some reason). The second floor was never repurposed and remains vacant. This move will leave that side of the mall without any semblance of an anchor store. In fact, all of the former anchors, save for Macy's are now gone, and Macy's as a chain is having its problems as well. The idea has recently been mooted for Richland County to buy the whole property for offices. I don't know -- I think at this point, razing the buildings, plowing the parking lot and planting trees might be the way to go. Charlton Heston could ride through on a horse..

UPDATE 7 February 2018 -- Here is the new Sandhill building (not yet occupied):

UPDATE 18 June 2024 -- There is some kind of construction happening at the old Burlington. I suppose it's related to the county buying the mall, but I haven't heard anything specific about it:

Also added map icon, and updated post title from "Moving" to "Moved", and gave the mall street address instead of just "Columbia Mall".

Rose Bud was the follow on operation in this location to Kiddie Korner. Possibly at some point in between, it was also Ectax Services. I don't actually know when Rose Bud closed, but Kiddie Korner was about 2009, and when I took these pictures in November 2017, it looked to have been vacant for a while.

RealtyTrac says the building was built in 1958, which I can believe looking at it.

Rose Bud was behind (or in front of, depending on your point of view) Pizza Man and as commenter Andrew notes both those buildings have now been razed.

As reported by commenter James R, Mattress Man is no longer in this Sunset Boulevard strip mall. Prestige Appliance moved out of that suite in October of 2014, and it was empty for a while after that.

I just noticed, looking at the strip marquee, that the Mattress Man mascot is, in fact, a "Mattress Man", or as the late George Carlin might have said, He's a mattress, man..

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

Well, another day, another Pig. I wasn't even aware there was a place called Red Bank in the Midlands until I started this blog, but there's actually a good bit of commercial activity there near the I-20 intersection. Although now there's a little less..

As commenter Homer mentions, with the closing of this store, the only footprints the chain has left in the area are the North Main Street & Devine Street stores, and with the adding of this closing, I will have, if I am counting correctly, 19 closings for Piggly Wiggly. How have the mighty fallen.

(Hat tip to commenter Jimmy)

UPDATE 12 January 2018: Add store number as found by commenter Andrew to post title.

How have the mighty fallen..

This Dentsville Best Buy across from Columbia Mall used to be my go-to place for quick buys of computer and networking equipment when I had my previous job. It was also a good place for DVDs & CDs, back when those were a thing. Lately I have had much less need to test various networking configurations or throw together new linux & Windows installs, so my visits had become much more rare. I did feel that the merchandise was starting to rattle around in this huge building a bit as they kind of thinned out the inventory. I also felt it was becoming much more common to find unstocked gaps on the shelves where tags indicated your item *should* be, and for finding items which seemed to be completely untagged or priced..

Of course the root cause of all of those symptoms is the ongoing "creative destruction" of retailing as we have known it. It's simply the case now that I will only hit a Best Buy if I need something *today*; otherwise it's Amazon. That said, I'm still surprised they didn't stay open through the holiday shopping season.

Here's The State story announcing the closing.

UPDATE 22 March 2021 -- As mentioned in the comments, this place is being converted into a church:

(Also adding a map icon).

I did a closing on this address when the Jiffy Lube shut down. In retrospect, that seems to have been a harbinger for the whole property. There is a nice little landscape of trees still on the corner, but other than that, pretty much everything else is gone. It is a bit amusing that the roadside coffee banners outlasted the buildings by quite a few days. I suspect probably the crews didn't bother to read them and assumed they belonged to the adjacent Sonic.

No clue yet what is planned for this lot, but it's a fairly valuable Interstate exit corner now, and just across from a successful new shopping/restaurant plaza.

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I blogged the relocation of Prestige Appliance from Sunset Boulevard to Fernandina Road in November 2014 when they moved into the former Fireplace Center.

Around the same time, they were building and opening a new store in Augusta. I'm guessing that they tried to do too much at the same time and got overextended. At any rate, as reported in The Augusta Chronicle, they declared Chapter 7 (simple liquidation) bamkruptcy on 7 September 2017.

I say "simple" liquidation, but apparently it is actually a bit more complicated than that since as you can see here, the merchandise and fleet are still intact at this location.

(Hat tip to commenter John)

UPDATE 15 January 2018 -- Drove by on 13 Jan 2018, and they were having a liquidation:

UPDATE 9 July 2018 -- Not a great picture (shot from I-26), but now Chocolate Factory & Coffee Shoppe: