Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

There was a time when I would have known within days that Waldenbooks at Columbia Mall had closed. I guess it says something about the times (and me) that in the event I didn't even suspect until I started getting google hits on this blog for keywords like "waldenbooks columbia mall closed". I went by today to check it out, and it is indeed gone, though there is still a (discount) book store in that storefront.

I'm pretty sure Waldenbooks was one of the original stores in the mall when it opened, and one of the last of those (I believe only Sears is left now, though if you count Macy's through its purchase of Rich's there would be two).

Books were actually pretty well represented in the initial mall. There was Walden's, Zondervan's Christian Books, B. Dalton Books, Rich's had a reasonably sized book department and I think Belk's had a smaller one for a while. While I would often check Rich's for interesting closeouts, Walden's and B. Dalton's were my main hangouts. In those days, you never knew when new books would be out so I would generally stop by at least once a week and make a run through the SF and humor sections. Of course once I moved out of town, I stopped by less often, and by the time I moved back, I was an Amazon junkie, and the brick and mortar shops I tended to hit were either B&N, Books-a-Million or The Happy Bookseller. The last book I can specifically recall buying from this Walden's was (South Carolinian) David Weber's Honor Among Enemies in 1996.

Waldenbooks as a chain is owned by Borders, and the parent company has been closing these smaller outlets for years. According to this Reuters story the company plans to slash its Waldenbooks locations from 300 to 50 or 60, and I guess Columbia Mall didn't make the cut.

I noticed the closings signs out yesterday for this Ritz Camera location in Sparkleberry Square by Kroger on Two Notch Road.

I've used Ritz and their predecessor Wolfe off and on over the years. In general they seem to have a friendly and knowledgeable staff with the downside being that you sometimes get behind someone with an involved consultation when you just want to drop off some film. I went by today to take some pictures of the place, and maybe get a spare battery for the closing-cam. I got there too late to shop, but I'm guessing the sale will last another week or so at least.

I was totally unaware that the chain had gone Chapter 11 in February -- This blog post has some of the details and a complete list of Ritz store closings. It appears that the store I normally use, on Beltline by Richland Mall, will not be closing. In fact, the Two Notch store seems to be the only one in Columbia on the list -- We'll see how things develop.

UPDATE 26 March 2014 -- Add tags.

Man, this is a cavernous space! My eyes tend to glide over buildings that I'm not interested in, and most of the time auto parts stores fall into that category, but it's hard to believe how many times I must have driven past that behemoth without noticing it. Apparently this place was a machine shop as well as a parts store, so I guess that explains the larger footprint. Perhaps it explains why the place closed as well. I admit I have very little idea of what exactly a machine shop does, but if it involves auto repair, wouldn't most people use parts from the factory rather than having them machined locally?

According to a really cool real estate listing that you should look at, if just for the ariel view, the place has 9600 square feet in the main space and 2690 square feet in the mezzanine. Notice the curtains hung in the mezzanine window too!

Hat tip to ChiefDanGeorge..

UPDATE 28 Sep 2010 -- It's now a church:

I noticed on the electronic sign you see when you're at the Harden Street light heading downtown on Gervais a month or so ago that Peter Glenn Ski & Sports was going out of business.

The only time in my life I've even almost gone skiing was in, I think, ninth grade when we had a class trip to a North Carolina slope but I got sick and had to give my place to a cousin. It's probably just as well as I'm sure I would have broken something. All that is to say that I never went into, or considered going into, Peter Glenn.

The window "murals" were nice though!

UPDATE 16 April 2009: Commenter Brian notes that this place used to be "Jeff Price Tennis & Ski". I have updated the post title to include that. He also notes that the last day of "Peter Glenn" was probably 8 March 2009, and I have made that update to the post title as well.

UPDATE 13 May 2010: Rearranged Post title to put "Jeff Price" first, and added the "& skate"

UPDATE 4 February 2016 -- As noted by commenter Joe Shlabotnik, this place has been torn down:

UPDATE 13 July 2017 -- The new building is up:

This building across the street from Trenholm Plaza in the remnants of the Forest Lake Shopping Center is now Coplon's department store, but in the 60s and 70s, it was the store where my mother most like to shop for groceries: Colonial.

Although I went there many times, I was young enough that certain very specific things stick in my mind rather than a good overall memory. In particular, I recall that if you came in through the main doors (which were on the Sakura side of the building, I think), took your cart and jinked left across the row of checkout lines, you would find a wire cage filled with boxes of Barnum's animal crackers, and we would always try to wheedle our mother into buying some (it rarely worked). They also shared a house brand for cheese, Farm Charm with Big Star groceries, and we all felt that this was the best cheddar of all the local groceries.

In the right back corner of the store, there was a Coke machine (presumably mostly for employee breaks) which stayed at $0.10 long after all the other Coke machines I was familiar with had gone to $0.15. The restrooms were, I believe, through a swinging door behind the machine. As was common with grocery stores, and indeed most other stores, in this period, these were not official restrooms -- there was no customer access. Of course all bets were off with childhood emergencies and a persuasive mother. I recall she talked the staff into letting me back there once, and I was tremendously impressed by the raciness of having an exasperated handwritten sign taped up over the urinal: Those of you with shorter bats please stand closer to the plate. That never would have flown in an "official" restroom.

And then of course there was the park behind the store where we spent many hours while our mother shopped, and where I climbed the monkey bars and got stuck hanging from my knees.

Groceteria has a history of Colonial and Big Star. It's clear from that that Colonial was in trouble by the 70s and was rebranding as the lower margin Big Star, but I don't know exactly when this store closed. I know it was well before I went to college, so I'm thinking mid-70s. After it closed, we sometimes shopped the Big Star co-located with the Fort Jackson Boulevard K-Mart for Farm Charm cheese, but in general that was too far, and I think my mother usually went to Trenholm Plaza after that.

Coplon's remodelled the Colonial building to add the front drive-under canopy, and moved the main entrance to the Forest Drive side of the building. I have never been inside since Colonial left but I feel sure you can't get a $0.10 Coke there anymore.

You can still see the empty placard in the K-Mart sign showing where the Advance Auto Parts sign used to be -- If K-Mart were in better shape itself, they probably would have pulled that down, as it looks decrepit and bad for their brand.

Anyway, the way I recall it, this space which apparently dates from 1970 like the K-Mart, was in its first iteration, a Western Auto.

The Western Auto that I remember best was the one at Trenholm Plaza, where I used to browse the Western Flyer bikes and buy those huge 1-volt carbon-zinc batteries with the screw terminals for hobby projects. I know I went into this store a number of times, but I can't really reall anything specific about it. Wikipedia says that Western Auto was acquired first by Sears, and then later by Advance Auto Parts, which phased out the Western Auto name (mostly) in 2003 (though many stores had already switch to "Advance" by then), and in fact this store was an Advance when it closed.

That history is a bit ironic since K-Mart like Western Auto was bought by Sears. If Sears had held onto the Western Auto brand a bit longer (Sears dropped Western in 1998 and bought K-Mart in 2005), they could have had some sort of super-mega store in this building

UPDATE 4 April 2022: Updating tags, adding map icon.

Honestly, what more can I say about Sounds Familiar? I've written about it here, here, and here: Nice Columbia based record store chain that had a good selection, and knowledgeable staff but fell victim to the Internet revolution as did most record store chains. This location, on Parklane near Columbia Mall, was the penultimate one to close, leaving the Rosewood store alone for the last month or so. Note to the almost antique "cassettes and records" slogan given on the sign. I wonder how many of either they sold in the last 10 years?

However little else I might have to say about the chain, I will say that today was a magnificent day for taking pictures, especially if you like clouds -- and I do!

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I just noticed the other day that this Hess filling station by the K-Mart on Two Notch Road was gone. It's by the Wendy's that's gone, which is by the Casual Male which is gone, making that strip something of a desolation row.

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Here's another closed Eckerd store, although google indicates that this one was open as recently as the Rite Aid transition, which is not how I recall it. This store sits at the intersection of Two Notch and Beltline, and is now a children's dental clinic.

I'm pretty sure this location also once housed the local AMC dealership, name now forgotten, where I bought a really awful, I mean world class bad, car, though all those structures have since been torn down (or if they were like the car, may have just fallen apart..)

UPDATE 25 January 2012 -- Interestingly, the building directly across the street (in the old Payless Shoes/Carzzz location) is also becoming a dental clinic.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add tags, map icon, change "Eckerd" to "Eckerd Drugs" & "Rite Aid Drugs" to "Rite Aid" in post title.

UPDATE 17 November 2022: Changed title from "Eckerd Drugs / Rite Aid" to "Rite Aid / Eckerd Drugs" based on the comments.

By all rights, I ought to remember Ravenwood Pharmacy. It was in the 1970 phonebook, so I would have been nine at the time, and I recall a lot of stuff from 1970. It was also near to Trenholm Park where we went from time to time and shared a parking lot with the Covenant Road Piggly Wiggly where my mother sometimes (though admittedly not often) shopped. Add to that the fact that presumably it lasted several years beyond 1970, and I'm a bit mystified by why I can't recall it at all. I suppose the fact that we filled almost all our prescriptions at Campbell's Drugs must explain it.

This real estate listing says the building was built in 1960, and I assume the Pharmacy was the first tenant. The second tenant was Forest Lake TV in its second location. I can't recall any tenants after that (though I would have been living out of town at the time) -- certainly the building has been empty for at least five years now.

UPDATE 31 July 2010 -- Looks like it's to be a thrift store now:

UPDATE 11 September 2010 -- Apparently that's not going to happen:

UPDATE 20 June 2016 -- Something looks to be happening here again:

UPDATE 25 April 2018 -- Well, the 2016 attempt didn't happen, but now there is more work going on:

UPDATE 14 June 2018 -- Hmm, very blue. Maybe a Pelican snocone place?

UPDATE 30 October 2018 -- Now open as DCP Convenience: