Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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)

Art Smart Academy has moved from their Broad River Road location to 571 Chapin Road as of November 2024.

LoopNet says it is a 2 acre lot, and the aerial picture shows impressive depth, so I'm sure some sort of commercial future is ahead for the property.

(Hat tips to commenters Gypsie & Tom)

Commenter Gypsie puts this demolition down to the ongoing Interstate construction, and it would be the closest part of the property to the highway, but I haven't found any news stories about it. The building was in Browning Business Center, and was at one point ITT Technical Institute as you can see here. I don't know much about Southeastern Institute, other than their website is still online, but totally blank, but apparently it was a healthcare trade school as described in this superpages listing.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

George I. Pair closed in 2012, and demolition started in December of 2022. It took me quite a while to get out there, and I expected to find just a flat patch of earth, but the excavators are still on site, and a few walls and porticoes are still in place. It was a nice afternoon for February, and I spent a good while walking around the grounds, so if you click-through for the full post, expect lots of pictures, which I haven't really organized or culled.

You can see a stories on the demolition here, here & here.

(Hat tip to commenter Db)

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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)

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.