Archive for the ‘colleges’ tag
Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, 4201 North Main Street: January 2025 2 comments
According to WLTX Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary merged with Hickory North Carolina's Lenoir-Rhyne University back in 2012, in a move which locals expected to strengthen the Columbia campus, but which in the end has resulted in it merging with the new parent and moving to Hickory itself. One local pastor quoted by WLTX expects the move to exacerbate an ongoing local pastor shortage especially as graduates will now tend to end up in the North Carolina synod.
According to The State, the move was to be made by 1 January of 2025. When I drove through on 9 February there didn't seem to be anybody around though clearly the buildings had not been emptied and there was still a quirky vehicle on the grounds.
Also according to The State as of mid-December the property had not yet been listed, though Lenoir-Rhyne does expect to sell it.
(Hat tip to commenter george011210)
Virginia College, 7201 Two Notch Road: 2018 no comments
Virginia College was the follow-on operation in this Columbia Mall outparcel to Toys-R-Us. As you can see in that post, the college did some major work on the building before opening in 2010.
The whole chain ran into trouble in 2016 when the Federal Department of Education withdrew recognition of its accrediting body. (As I recall the feds were in a bit of a snit about for-profit schools in general at the time). They tried & failed to find another body that would accredit them, leading, as far as I can tell from the Wikipedia article, to the whole chain shutting down in 2018.
(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)
Big Star Grocery / Remington College, 607 Bush River Road: Late 2020 6 comments
I believe this building was built for the office supply chain OfficeMax, or at least that's what was in the storefront when I first became aware of it. Remington College moved in sometime around 2009, when the first picture above was taken.
I noticed about a week ago that the signage at the road and on the building had come down, but I'm unable to find any thing in the local media about it. The Facebook page for this location has entries up through Thanksgiving 2020, but no note about closing the campus. The main website for the school doesn't mention Columbia as a campus, though Wikipedia still does.
UPDATE 28 January 2021: Add Big Star to the post title based on the comments.