Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This building, next door to the Forest Acres City Hall, was a dry-cleaner for many years, starting as Gillespie's and then as Burnette's. For many of those years, the right-hand side of the building had a coin laundromat though that closed some time before Burnette's left for Forest Park, a block or so away.

The building sat empty for several years, until demolition started in late June of 2022. The building is now completely razed, which, with the old Russell & Jeffcoat lot adjacent to it also now bare gives a surprising amount of open space in central Forest Acres for new construction.

(Hat tip to my sister)

After Steak & Ale closed, this building was split into two suites. The suite on the right side was Buster's Bistro and then I believe a health insurance brokerage while the suite on the left side was The Turning Pointe danceware. Now they have left for a new home at 1030 Harden Street, the old Cribb's Bakery location.

Cottle Strawberries maintains a produce stand on the lot during the Spring, but otherwise I believe the property is now untenanted though it does appear to have been sold so something new should be coming soon.

There isn't any sign on the door that I can see, but google agrees with commenter Justin that The Carousel A Chic Kid's Botique in Forest Village is closed. I believe this space would once have been part of The Happy Bookseller, so probably 2009 is the earliest they could have opened.

(Hat tip to commenter Justin)

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)

Here's yet another store very much in my orbit into which I never went for one reason or another. I believe that the last time I bought clothes I thought about looking through the shirts in this Trenholm Plaza storefront, but in the event I ended up at Belk's & Amazon.

With this closing, there are now three empty spaces on this side of the plaza, to include the old Stein Mart (which was a Halloween store for a while) and Rosso.

On the other hand, there is now a Mac store in the old Michaels Jewelry, so they are still able to fill vacancies.

(Hat tip to commenter Heath)

I used to go to this Pizza Joint location fairly often when they were open late on Thursdays for Service Industry Night, but when they stopped that, I kind of drifted away. I had noticed driving by several times lately that they were not open when I would have expected it, but I put it down to covid + staffing, and didn't think much about it until commenter Larry noted that they had had a fire there.

Looking at the place last Sunday, I am happy to report that repairs are obviously underway, so hopefully they will be back soon. The building must be surprisingly durable as it has been a number of different operations since starting life as a Hardee's.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

This location of Mattress Firm is one that survived the big wave of store closing a few years ago, but it has now pulled up the sheets. As commenter Matt points out, it was just across the street from another mattress store, which can't have helped matters much.

Somehow or other I managed to drive by hundreds of times over the years without ever fixing it in my mind that the store was here, and probably dozens of times in the past month without noticing the closing flags. We'll see what comes next -- the location is not bad, with stoplight access and a good bit of traffic.

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

I'm sure I must have been in this CVS at one time or another, but I can't recall it if so.

The Post & Courier says:

CVS apparently is looking to trim its network of locations, so it is letting go of the location as its lease expires despite the strong commuter traffic that moves along the corridor daily, Mills said.

In the event, the closure was finalized on 25 May.

I will say that the drive-through here was a bit awkward.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

UPDATE 5 July 2022: Add word "Pharmacy" to post title.