Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

As I have mentioned before, my mother, who had a taste for the odd & exotic, used to stop in at Pier 1 from time to time while I was growing up. Since that time, I believe I have only been in a Pier 1 once, and I have never been in this Harbison location.

This store is in an outbuilding by the Outback wing of the Harbison Court shopping center, which I used to visit fairly frequently for Barnes & Noble.

The State has the story on the closing, mentioning that the retailer is closing about half of its 900+ stores. So, say, that's more than 400 locations, which is a pretty whopping number. The retail apocalypse continues..

(Hat tip to commenter JCB)

UPDATE 30 June 2020: Update tags

Here is another of Harbison Boulevard's Mattress Firm stores. It looks like they already have a new tenant, Rainbow, lined up, though I have no idea what that is.

I confess I have very little reason to go to Harbison Court anymore with both Barnes & Noble and Chili's being gone though I guess I did eat at Olive Garden once last year.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

As mentioned several times in Have Your Say, the Chili's on Harbison has closed.

The story from Palmetto Weekend says they were unable to renew their lease, which argues that Harbison Court may already have something else planned.

I believe they were already winding down last week, as I went by at 10pm on Friday night, and they had already turned off the front facade lights by the time I drove around to that side of the building.

I used to go to Chili's fairly frequently, and still do like it, but my main reason was that it was a decent place that stayed open late every night. While they still do that in the Florida locations (or the ones I've visited), they no longer do that here, pretty much leaving that niche to Applebee's.

(Hat tip to commenter ED)

UPDATE 17 April 2019 -- You can see the signage for The Krab Hut now:

Nothing Held Back

Well, continuing the story from the Toys 'Я' Us post, this is the same thing but in a more advanced stage. The Babies "Я" Us closeout sale has been going since February and is now in the end stages, if this WLTX story is still current.

One thing I didn't mention in the Toys closing is that both business units share a common problem on top of everything else: The US, other Western nations and Japan are currently in a "baby bust" situation. That means even if they could regain their former appeal to the customer base, the customer base itself is shrinking, or as the Four Seasons once said Bye, Bye, Baby, Goodbye!

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew I think)

Well, this has already been extensively ventilated in Have Your Say, but Shoe Carnival has moved down the hill from Columbiana Station by Old Navy to Harbison Court.

The new location, seen below, is the former home of Regency Beauty Institute (on which I never did a closing) and right next to the previous (and recently departed) shoe store in that complex, Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse.

This has already been discussed, but Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse has closed on Harbison. This store opened in 2012 and replaced Rugged Warehouse (interesting that both names contain Warehouse) which closed in 2010.

As you can see in the final picture, Harbison Court will not lack for shoe stores due to this closing as the adjacent storefront (which was at one time Regency Beauty Institute, though I'm not sure that was the most recent tenant) is being upfitted to become Shoe Carnival.

Yoghut moved from its original location near the old Barnes & Noble in early 2014. The new location was on the other side of the plaza, just to the left of Outback.

As you can see from these (mixed) Yelp reviews, it was open until at least 1 July 2017. There is no sign on the door, so I assume that they have now closed rather than again relocating.

The Main & Blossom location is still open.

(Hat tip to commenter Michellle A)

This 9 May 2017 State story is a bit inspecific, but we can conclude two things from it:

1) Tuesday Morning is opening a store in the old Hancock Fabrics location on Harbison, and

2) As of May 2017, this store on Saint Andrews Road was still open.

What they *don't* say is that *this* store was moving to Harbison, but given that the Harbision store is apparently now open, and has the same phone number that this one did, I think we can safely conclude that.

Also somewhat interesting, is that the story still refers to this plaza as The Clusters of Whitehall.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 9 October 2017 -- Here is the new location of the store in Harbison Court:

UPDATE 22 June 2018 -- The old Tuesday Morning is now HobbyTown USA:

Golfsmith was the follow-on operation in this storefront to OfficeMax/Office Depot, moving in sometime in 2013.

As this article explains, the firm filed for Chapter 11 in mid September. What went wrong, well, from the same source

But really what went wrong, and what happens next?

To the first point, it’s clear from a read of the Golfsmith bankruptcy filing and those familiar with the company both internally and externally that Golfsmith expanded to its current 109 stores in the U.S. too aggressively, in the wrong way (as far as store formats go) and most likely without proper capital to support such expansion.

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All of which was exacerbated by the fact that--as part of the Chapter 11 filing reads--“the enthusiasm underpinning the ‘Tiger Woods Phenomenon’ significantly waned.”

Apparently Dick's Sporting Goods has acquired at least some of the Golfsmith assets, but I'm not clear from this story whether that is nationally or just in Pennsylvania.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 13 September 2017 -- Now a popup Halloween store, Spirit Halloween:

I had done a closing for the Columbia Mall Hancock Fabrics but had not got around to dropping by the Harbison Court location until this last weekend. In the event, I wasn't able to get a good shot of the place for various reasons, but this store too is part of the chain's ongoing liquidation since their February 2016 bankruptcy and will close soon.

By the bye, the link above also links to this piece which is a pretty exact description of my childhood memories of fabric stores.