Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The new location:

Yoghut moved into the old Quiznos location next to Barnes & Nobel in 2011 and stayed there until B&N closed.

Now they are in the process of moving across the plaza to a suite next to the Outback Steakhouse. I guess I can understand that their foot traffic in the old location would be greatly reduced with the closure of B&N, but it seems to me that the last thing people coming out of Outback are interested in is more food..

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

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.