Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The first time I encountered Macaroni Grill was in Overland Park Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City). I used to get sent there often for contract work we were doing for US Sprint, which had a headquarters just a few blocks from the restaurant. It was a lively place, always crowded and with vigorous service: The servers would write their name in bold strokes on your table, and there were usually a few who would burst into Opera arias several times during a meal. The food was good too; they had an excellent Margherita pizza along with standard Italian dishes, and the bread was top-notch: large flavorful loaves served with cracked pepper and olive oil from bottles on the tables.

(The only negative about this particular place is that it has the distinction of being the only restaurant I've ever gone where the hostess implied that a bribe would get us seated..)

Anyway, after I stopped being sent to Kansas, I was glad to find that a Macaroni had opened in Columbia and I went a number of times, but it was never quite the same. There were definitely no singing servers, the Margherita pizza was off the menu and the bread loaves seemed smaller, and not as flavorful. I took a several year break after concluding that I had gotten mild food posioning after one visit, and the next time I went back, the place was almost empty, the menu was odd, the olive oil bottles were gone and I had the feeling that I was imposing on the staff by ordering food. When they brought the bill while I was still eating, and without offering me dessert (it was well before offical closing) I decided I was in no hurry to come back, and in fact did not.

Still, those were some good times back in the day..

(Hat tip to commenter Steve)

UPDATE 17 May 2017 -- I see that the Overland Park location I mention above has closed.

UPDATE 30 August 2017 -- The upfit to BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse is done, and they will be open on 4 September 2017:

I got off kind of on the wrong foot with Rita's as I read their slogan Ice Custard Happiness before walking over from Barnes & Noble and was expecting some rich frozen custard treat. In the event, I ended up with something like an Icee. Looking at their menu, I now see that I should have explicitly mentioned the word "custard" in my order rather than just specifying a flavor. Oh well.

You can see a small portion of the shop in operation in the first picture in the Sesame Inn closing. In the meantime, you can still get your fix across town at the Sandhill location.

(Hat tip to commenter Bob)

I have already done a closing for Huller's Black Forest in their final home on Saint Andrews Road. Before they moved there however, they occupied this Columbiana Drive building, up a flight of stairs from the Nathan's / Bruster's parking lot.

I thought I might as well do this one now, as the building has just reopened as The Tilted Kilt, a breastaurant a bit more upscale than Hooters and thankfully featuring no actual Scottish cuisine, most of which seems to have been created as a dare of some sort.

UPDATE 19 September 2022: Adding map icon.

Well, it's old news now, but Sears at Columbiana Centre is closing, and today was the first time I was able to get out that way to get some shots. I'm going ahead with a pretty-well-in-advance closing to give us a landing page to talk about it, and because it's pretty big news. Hopfully I will get inside shots for an update at some point. Certainly the pre-printed closeout signs in these exterior shots are pretty familiar to us all by now (blurry or not..).

It appears that Belk will be taking over some, though not all of this space.

Frankly, given how hollowed-out the Columbia Mall store is at this point, I expected it to go first.

UPDATE 11 February 2014 -- Here are some interior pix from 9 February:

UPDATE 29 Februayr 2020: Add tags, address, map icon.

Office supply store Staples has moved their Harbison branch from 281 Park Terrace Drive to 320 Harbison Boulevard.

And none too soon!

(Hat tips to commenters Andrew & William)

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Well, if you were reading Columbia Closings Saturday, you'll have noticed that commenter wanda scooped The State by two days on the closing of the Harbison Barnes & Noble.

I'll have to say that this closing is a bit of a surprise to me as this B&N is still open for their standard hours, and always seemed to me to have a pretty good crowd -- I certainly thought that the Richland Mall store, with its already abbreviated hours and declining location would close first.

Of course, though they are still open until 10 and 11pm, you can still see the industry changes that are reshaping the retail (and especially book) market. At this point, Barnes & Noble is sort of an upscale toy store that sells some books. I have to admit that aside from comic strip collections and reference books, I have mostly used this store for show-rooming and coffee these last two years since I got a Kindle. (And while I *can* load BN.com books into the kindle with Calibre, realistically I'm going to end up buying the books I showroom from Amazon..).

Still, over they years, I've bought hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of books from this store, sipped countless lattes and browsed many magazines -- I'll be sorry to see it go.

The State story implies they will be open through the holidays as apparently the lease, which they have decided not to renew, runs out with the year.

What does this mean for Richland Mall? Well, I hope to be wrong, but if this store can't make it, I fail to see how they can continue much longer there either, especially with the closing of TGI Friday's.

(Hat tip to commenter wanda)

UPDATE 26 January 2014 -- Here are some pix from 12 January 2014:

UPDATE 12 February: The windows are now unblocked, and you can see the interior again as shown in these pix from 9 February 2014:

UPDATE 17 June 2014 -- Work on the remodel has started:

UPDATE 15 June 2023: Adding Map icon.

Here's another closed Monterrey on the west side of the metro area.

Afton Court seems to be something of a hard-luck street over the last several years with the closing of Ritz Camera (though technically on another street) and more recently Bailey's.

I like the use of steps on this lot, including a set descending towards the adjacent movie theater.

(Hat tip to commenter Heath)

UPDATE 30 August 2017 -- Now Don Tequilas:

For some reason I've never really warmed up to McAlister's. I think that is probably due to the negative synergy of three factors: 1) They don't have booths, and the chairs are not comfortable, and 2) they don't have table service, but 3) you still can't refill your own drink.

Be that as it may, nobody is sitting at this one for a while, as it caught fire early on the 25th.

When I went by, I could definitely smell smoke as I stepped into the patio area. In contrast to a number of other places that have caught fire though, work started on recovery almost immediately, and equipment is already in place to rehabilitate the building. The "closed for renovation" sign suggests that there might be an upfit involved as well, but I tend to think that's just boiler-plate phrasing.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

11 September 2012: Updated status to "open again"

UPDATE 3 February 2014 -- Finally here's a picture of the refurbished store in operation:

Although this Steak 'n Shake was open well past the time I moved back to Columbiana, I can't recall seeing it open at all. Indeed, I didn't even realize until it came up recently in Have Your Say that this building was the former location.

Steak 'n Shake is one of those chains I've always been meaning to try but somehow never get around to. I guess I've been closest once in LA when I used Yahoo Travel to book myself a hotel for a Van Morrison concert and found myself in an almost totally non-english speaking part of Koreatown (the hotel room phonebooks were in Korean [though the staff couldn't have been nicer!]) and it looked like a place I could understand. Somehow that didn't quite happen, and somehow I've never connected in Florida (where they have a big presence) either.

At any rate this store listed in the Feb 2008 phonebook, but not in the Feb 2010 one, so I'm saying they shut down in 2009. The building has really delapidated quickly since then, and it looks like it would take major work to get a standard second-use restaurant (Asian buffett, Lizard's Thicket etc) into there.

UPDATE 2 May 2013 -- Some of the boards have now been prised off the windows, and we can take a bit of a look inside:

UPDATE 14 March 2016 -- Somewhere I have some pictures of this lot as vacant after the tear-down, and will post them, but as of now, it is rebuilt and open as M Kitchen (and has been for a while):

As detailed here, on 11 December 2012, Mattress Firm bought out Mattress Source and all the Mattress Source stores were closed temporarily for re-branding.

I missed the buyout news, not being in the mattress market currently, but noticed the new banner over the old marquee when I was driving down Harbison recently. Since I don't have a dog in the fight, I'll say that I like the name Mattress Firm better than Mattress Source as it works (presumably intentionally) as a play on words.

I'll also say that while I have no opinion yea or nay on their mattresses, I continue to admire the Tempurpedic logo.

You wouldn't think that you could get away with plastering a shapely undraped female derriere all over your marquee and front yard, but they do. Granted they have toned down the, um, cleavage from a few years ago:

UPDATE 19 September 2022 -- As mentioned in the comments, the building has come down. Also there seems to be a lot of land clearing behind the old site as well:

Also updating tags and adding map icon.

UPDATE 7 October 2022 -- Here are a few shots from the start of the teardown: