Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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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During my most recent trip to Fernandina, I noticed that this eclectic antique, book & decor shop on 8th Street had closed.

Over the past seveal years, I got a number of Christmas and other gifts there, in particular some interesting cookbooks, neat umbrellas and blown glass decorations. It was a fascinating place to walk through, though it was a bit out of the way in relation to the main shopping areas of the town. That may have had something to do with the closing, as I never found that many people inside while I made my visits. That's just speculation, the closing could be a retirement or any other reason, I can't seem to find anything about it in the local media. The google reviews point to a closing date sometime around early June.

In the meantime, the shop's Instagram remains up, with some nice pictures, and this is their archived web page from February 2023.

It's been a while since I've mentioned Inlet Square, the hard-luck south strand mall where US-17 splits in Murrells Inlet.

I noticed during an October visit that almost the last remaining major store in the mall, Books A Million had closed. That's a shame as over the pre-kindle years I certainly had my share of lattes there while browsing the aisles. In recent times it has been somewhat as Barnes & Noble is to Richland Mall, a rare national store hanging on in a nearly empty space. (Curiously both malls still have a Belk as well).

This WBTW article from 13 May notes in passing that the store "recently closed" while describing what sounds rather like a "flea mall" concept of local stores, with varying hours moving in to the mall's vacant spaces. I have yet to go inside to see how that is working out. This particular space is now a church.

I'm not sure how much USC still uses "textbooks" in the old sense. I haven't discussed it with anyone now in college, but my impression is that a lot of the books now are in ebook form. Since it sounds like the South Carolina Book Store is really getting out of the textbook market, that may be what happened.

At any rate, when I was in college this place was a sure visit every semester. In those, pre-internet, days this store and the USC owned textbook concession in the Russell House had a duopoly lock on the student book market. I usually tried to get all my bokos on campus, but invaribly there were one or two that were sold out and had to be tracked down here. They would also buy back textbooks, and from time to time growing up, my father would take me here with boxes of books that he had been sent in the hopes he would choose them for his classes, and would sell them, giving the proceeds to my sister and me. (I think he felt it wouldn't be quite right to take the money himself).

Aside from the texts, this place also had a heady mix of pencils, pens, notebooks, art supplies and drafting paper. There was a certain very specific smell when you walked in from all the paper and pencils. If I recall correctly, I had to get all my drafting supplies for my all-time least favorite class: Introduction To Engineering Drafting (or some similar name). I had a compass, gum erasers, drafting pencils, drafting paper and straight-edge. All of that, and after trying all day, I still could not draw a bolt in 3D perspective.

Despite driving past this store many times since college, I don't think I have been in since the 1980s, and I now it's too late to see if it still smelled the same..

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

While I was at Landmark Square the other day, I noticed an empty storefront near the anchor.

Somehow I missed the story a few years ago, but Shepherd's Corner Christian book store closed in May of 2017 when the owner moved back to West Virginia.

The store started in Cedar Terrace, and moved to this spot in 2002, for a total of just under 40 years of service.

I did not know that Lifeway was the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, which obviously is not going anywhere. They are, however, unable to keep these stores open during the ongoing great-unretailing, and plan to close all 170 of them. The plan is to maintain an online presence, though how that will work out I don't know given that Amazon certainly lists religious books.

This storefront is in an odd little plaza that wants to be connected to the one behind it, but isn't, making access harder than it needs to be.

Somewhat ironically, this store moved here fairly recently, previously having been on the other side of Harbison Boulevard.

(Hat tip to commenter JamesR)

This old school used book store was on the upper level of the Old Mill on US-1 in Lexington. I stopped by back in May when I was having lunch at the brewpub. They had a nice selection of SF -- I even picked up some A. E. Van Vogt in French. Not that I could read them. At one time I probably had a grade-school understanding, but that's long gone. At any rate though, he always said he was more popular in France than the US because his translations were done by a French poet. They're certainly not exemplary prose in English, but that Van Vogt dream logic pulls you in..

The later pictures are from August.

There is a nice little farewell message on the shop's Facebook Page.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

I took these pictures a few weeks ago -- I'm working on the assumption that this place is now closed.

At any rate, this closing is part and parcel of the bankruptcy described in this post.

I wonder what "Acorn" is..

Well, as has been noted in Have Your Say a good many times already, Family Christian Stores is closings all of the chains stores and going into liquidation.

USA Today has a good overview, and Gleanings has a bit more detail and Christian business community focus.

I had thought I recalled that this chain started as Zondervan (who once had a store at Columbia Mall though I never did a closing), and these articles confirm it. The Zondervan brothers founded the business in 1931, giving them an 85 year run, which is certainly not bad. In 2012, the current management brought out the already money losing business and reorganized as a non-profit, but even on that basis the cash flow was not enough, and the chain filed for Chapter 11 in 2015, but even with shedding a lot of debt, the re-organization never was able to stay above water and apparently a lot of the debt shed was owed to small enterprises which could not afford to stay in business without the owed payments, so a bad situation all the way around.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew I think)

Well, if you've been reading Have Your Say, then you know commenter joelc scooped The State by a week on the news that Books-A-Million in Trenholm Plaza is closing.

I've spent many an hour in the Trenholm Plaza store. When I was younger, and the store was open until 11pm, I would often grab a late-night latte there as I browsed the shelves and magazine racks. In more recent years, I've found a good night's sleep more and more important, and the store has stopped opening so late anyway.

Of course in recent years, I've also done most of my reading on a Kindle and have had less and less need for an actual, physical, bookstore. I still look for comic strip collections, which work better printed, and technical books, but it often seems that given my technical needs, and humor tastes, I'm more likely to find those online as well. I'm definitely not alone in this, as evidenced by the closings of the Harbison Books-A-Million, the Harbison Barnes & Noble, The Happy Bookseller and the list goes on..

The State article suggests that rather than the chain keeping the space and re-working it as they did on Harbison, new clothing retailers will be moving in.

For all us Millionaire's Club members,

there's still Sandhill, and Lexington.

For now.

(Hat tip to commenter joelc)

UPDATE 4 March 2014 -- Here are some pix from back during the snow of the place with the Store Closing sign deployed:

8 March 2014:

14 March 2014:

16 March 2014:

29 March 2014:

UPDATE 31 March 2014: Added 14 March 2014 pix, 16 March 2014 & 29 March 2014 pix.

UPDATE 1 October 2014: Added 8 March 2014 pix.