Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I was driving down Beltline last weekend when I noticed this Dollar Tree boarded up. When I turned around to take a closer look, it was quickly apparent that the place had seen a fire.

In fact it is a bit worse than "a fire". WLTX reports that the place burned on 28 September 2024 and on 17 December 2024.

I came across these pictures recently while I was looking for old Barnes & Noble shots and thought I might as well just post them all now.

This is a walk around & inside Richland Mall (still in the "Midtown" phase at that time) from 13 July 2008. I have left in all the shots, even the blurry and under exposed ones because it's not like I can go back and take better ones now...

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I think I've written that Borders Books was my touchstone for quality bookstores. They had a certain mistique as I first encountered them in exotic locales like Washington DC & Overland Park KS and often ended up coming home with a suitcase full of books I'd never find locally.

Although I never got my wish of Borders coming to Columbia, Barnes & Noble was a good second choice, and I spent many evenings at the Harbison location hanging out in the cafe with prospective purchases on the table. This one, at Richland Mall never seemed quite as nice to me, but was servicable enough and I certainly bought my share of books (and gifts) there.

You could kind of see it go down with the mall over the years though. At some point a few years before the end, they gave up on the mall and closed of the exit leading to the mall interior. You could notice a lot of maintainence that wasn't being done as well, partly I suppose because of the mall's troubles and partly because of the chain's. The mens' room especially got quite shoddy over the years, and nobody was taking care of the wobbly tables in the cafe. Finally they started dropping the hours. When I was younger and could drink coffee at 10pm, the store was open until 11pm, and I would often be on the last call out. In the end, I think, the hours had dropped to 8pm, and less on some days.

The last time I was there was on Christmas-Eve Eve of 2023, during the final closing sale, where I found some quite good bargains. Shortly after that, the store closed until the Woodhill location was ready, and earlier this year the building was finally razed during the Richland Mall demolition.

I have been to the new location once, and it looked quite nice.

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As of yet the demolition appears to be limited to taking down some parking lot lights and cutting some trees. I would guess not much interior teardown has been done, because I don't see a lot of refuse & dumpsters, but that's just a guess.

I'll keep updating this post as the demolition continues...

UPDATE 14 September -- The dates of this are going to be confusing. I normally date UPDATE notes with the date I make the update (like this note), not the date I took the pictures, but for this post I will mainly be doing the date of the pictures, though I probably got that confused in a number of cases. Oh well.

Here are some nostalgia and exploration videos about Richland Mall that commenters have pointed out to me:

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This spot at the corner of Two Notch & Beltline was previously the home of Hursey's Trading Post & Advance On Checks with Auto Money going in sometime between 2014 and 2016. Google streetview shows it here as late as September 2022.

I'm thinking there may have briefly been another operation after this, as the current color scheme of the building is a red & black one, completely different from the green & yellow theme of Auto Money.

I should probably also mention that at least through 2011, the side of the building closest to Burger King was a separate suite housing My'Kuls Exclusive Gift Shop.

The closing date here is just a guess, although I'm pretty sure I have driven this stretch of road early this year and did not notice anything odd here.

I actually spent a fair bit of time at these apartments back in the 1970s as my piano teacher lived on the ground floor. We had started out with her in a "modern" class at Havens on Devine before they went all-in on picture framing and still sold pianos. It was a group class where everyone wore headphones and played an electric piano which was (supposedly) audible only to you and the teacher as she switched between feeds. It's not an idea that every really caught on, possibly because it wasn't a great one. After that, we followed her to apartments out on Leesburg Road, and Forest Drive, and finally these. I was an awful and passive-agressive student since I *really* didn't want to be taking piano lessons, and I regret the hard time I must have given her.

Anyway, at the time the place was fine, though it appears to have gone downhill in more recent years. I didn't see any homeless activity, but it really didn't look like a place I wanted to get out of the car and poke around in, so these are all drive-by, drive-through, pictures. With the state of the area now, I don't rally see anyone putting a lot of money into these to refurbish and re-open, but we'll see what happens.

Here's a State story involving the place that ended better than it well could have.

(Hat tip to commenter Arthur P.)

Folks, with today's Forest Acres redevelopment announcement, I thought I would go ahead and throw up a Richland Mall post, even though I don't have anything prepared, so we can discuss it here rather than in Have Your Say.

So have at it!

(Hat tip to commenter John for the heads up).

UPDATE 10 November 2022 -- A question from commenter Russell below reminded me that there commenter Dennis worked of a map of the original open-air mall, and I got the tenant lists for 1926, 1975 & 1985 here. (Also changed to post title to add the word 'Redevelopment' at the end, added the street address and added the map icon.)

Also a note to folks popping in for the first time due to this post -- If you will go to Alphabetical Closings, you may find your favorite vanished spot in the site index.

Beltline Grill was the follow-on operation in this Bradley Plaza storefront to long-time stalwart and pandemic casualty Alehouse Lounge. They announced on their Facebook on 29 July that they were closing up shop. Looking at that page, I think I might have enjoyed lunch there, but for some reason it was never on my radar.

(Hat tip to commenter Heath)

13 July 2008:

8 February 2022:

9 February 2022:

The last movie I saw during the pre-COVID era at Regal Columbia Cinema was Frozen 2, in which I was highly disappointed (though my niece liked it). I know that I saw at least one movie there after the theaters re-opened, but for the life of me I can recall what it was right now. On both occasions the experience was fine (apart from the actual movie..), but you could tell that the place was definitely an older auditorium which hadn't kept up with all the new trends.

That was not at all the case when these cinemas opened. As I have written before this location was not the first theater at Richland Mall. The old open-air mall had a free-standing duplex on an out-parcel where I saw many a "summer movie" during those old "drop off the kids & shop" promotions. It also famously had a time capsule, though commenter Del says it eventually came to naught.

When the old mall was razed and the current mall was built, the new rooftop cinema opened as part of the Litchfield Theaters chain, and it was classy. There were real cloth curtains over the screens which would be closed between the trailers and the main feature, which would start after the famous "Sea Oats" logo. I'm a little hazy on what happened to Litchfield Theaters. I think perhaps the head guy perished in a plane crash and the chain fell into hard times without him, but I couldn't swear to that.

Anyway, after that, it became part of the Regal chain, and I always looked forward to the "policy trailer" with the animated monorail riding along a track of 35mm film (and the Kernel of Doom! popcorn). The trailer was updated many times over the years with increasingly elaborate train redesigns, state of the art CGI and audio effects. Most recently, it has lost a bit of its charm as people have forgotten what "film" was, and the 35mm tracks have been replaced with actual rails.

As you can see from the 2008 pictures, in the beginning, you could take the escalator from inside the mall to the roof and walk to the theater from there, and there were also "Now Playing" & "Coming Soon" posters in displays on the walls of the mall in a couple of places. Sometime after Belk closed its entrance to that side of the mall, they stopped running the escalator, and the only way to the theaters was to drive to the rooftop.

As I mentioned elsewhere recently, my impression in years past was that this theater and the theaters behind Golden Corral had a gentleman's agreement to not book duplicate movies in most cases, and it was usually the case that if you were in Forest Acres, your movie would be at this theater or that one, but not both. In recent years this broke down, especially with so few movies available recently, and I don't think that helped the bottom line for this place. Certainly being closed for months on end during the darkest days of the pandemic did not.

During that closure, the mall management put up traffic cones and sawhorses to keep you from driving back into the theater area, and as you can see in the 9 February pictures, those are now back. However the cones were set aside today as a number of vehicles were back in the theater area, perhaps getting ready to clear it out, as was a news crew from WOLO.

With the mall currently under contract to be sold and possibly razed, I doubt that any second operation or dollar cinema will move in here, but as predictions about the mall have always been iffy, we'll just have to see.

Here are stories from WLTX, The State & The Free Times.

(Hat tip to commenter Jeannette)

Although I must have driven by it many times, I was not aware of Nostalgia Antiques on Beltline. Judging by their Facebook page, I might well have found some items there, probably more on the "Collectibles" side of things.

You can see their closing announcement on their Facebook, but you might want to check it in the future as well, as they intend to continue selling online and out of their home.

(Hat top to commenter Gypsie)