Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Orvis was founded in 1856, and impinged very infrequently on my attention over the last 170 years. I had the vague idea it was some sort of L. L. Bean thing, (apparently there was more fishing involved than I expected) and totally missed that fact that a store had opened in Cross Hill Market, taking the place of PlantHouse which closed in March 2024.

Here are State stories on the store announcement, and the store opening. There doesn't yet seem to be on on the closing. The chain announced the grand opening on their Facebook just shy of a year ago.

The closing doesn't really have anything to do with Columbia as a market. The chain is in big trouble and is closing about half their stores (for now).

The "November" closing date is just a guess, given that we are more than half-way through October and the closing sale has already started.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

Daniel's Fine Furniture has moved from their location across from the Airport to 1217 Sunset Boulevard in the same little strip which used to house JackSon's Southern Kitchen. They appear to have some sort of sale going on.

Here is the West Metro News on the move.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

I have the feeling that this place had a different name when I was growing up, and indeed you can see that the current marquee seems to be installed over a, different, previous one. During those years, it was not at all unusual for a "real" store to be in downtown Fernandina. There was a grocery store where the antique mall is now, Wass Drugs, the local department store, run by by a childhood friend of my father, a gas station, and several sundries shops. Now it is all pretty much restaurants and touristy shops -- not that I don't enjoy that, but a bit of the character of a "working city" is gone.

I don't have many specific memories of the hardware store, except that I'm pretty sure my father would walk over from my aunt's house now and then to pick up things for the various small repair projects he did for her on our visits, such as tacking the stair-covers down again. As it happens, I needed a dowel when I was in town in December of 2023, and walked over from the hotel and got one. The place was very old-school of the sort you don't see much anymore -- think the downton (not Five Points") incarnation of Hiller Hardware.

They have been trying to sell the building for a couple of years, and this summer seemed to have stepped up the efforts, and posted official closing signs. I'm unclear if they are still open at this time or not -- I don't see anything online, and google doesn't have them down as "closed", but if not, it's just a matter of time.

Commenter Badger points out this old quonset hut on Garners Ferry Road just east of the Old Garners Ferry Road fork. Regular google search doesn't bring up a lot of information about it, but we can get some old StreetView pictures to tie down two incarnations:

September 2007: A window tinting operation; I can't quite make out the name:

June 2008: I can't quite make out the name here either, but some sort of plant and/or produce stand:

August 2011: Still the same place I think, but with a better sign saying something like Produce & Plants Food Mart. If you move around a little the first word might be Mulligan's:

The plants and produce operation was gone by November 2014, and the place seems to have been vacant since then.

The first image above made me think of Villa Villekulla over the weekend, as I took it on 4 September 2021 during my Labor Day weekend visit, so I figured it was time to do a closing.

The original Villa Villekulla of course was the ramshackle, but magical, house that Pippi Longstocking lived in alone (but with good friends close by) while her father was off plying the seas in the children's books from the early 20th century. And in fact, Fernandina already had a Villa Villekulla connection as one of the Pippi movies was filmed there with a particular house in Old Town (at 212 Estrada Street to be exact), doing duties as the setting during filming.

My memory is that the toy store opened sometime after that, when the connection was still in people's minds, but after the movie itself was largely forgotten (it was not a big hit). The location on 2nd Street, next to the Hampton Inn is an interesting one in that there are two suites in the building not exactly separated. You enter through the street level entrance, and the toy store area is off to your left, though you are basically in it already, but there is a staircase to the right, without a separate door or any barrier, which leads up to the top floor suite which is a totally separate business. When the toy store opened, the top floor was a pretty decent Italian restaurant, and later it became an art gallery. It was a bit of an odd setup.

Anyway, the toy store was somewhat eclectic, with lots of stock that I never saw elsewhere, and generally on my fall or winter visits, I would pick up a number of Christmas presents for my nieces. I remember a number of different type of slime or putty, markers for coloring on windows, throwing balls that would bounce on waves, old-time "car bingo" cards, sidewalk paints & quirky Asian toys. I also picked up a model hot-air balloon as in their logo that spins in the wind.

On my trip last December however, I noticed things had changed. The store had been rearranged leaving much more free-space, possibly to draw attention away from the fact that there was considerably less stock. I still picked up several things, but I took it as a bad sign, something confirmed when I went back in July to find the storfront empty, and papered over with notices of a new enterprise moving in.

I'm not sure exactly what happened, but at one point I found a story about how the store was adding an event space (I can't find it again now). In December, the upstairs art gallery was gone, and my surmise is that Villa Villekulla, possibly already stressed, took the space over to bring in more money, over-extended themselves and had to give it up. That's speculation, all I can say for sure is that their Facebook indicated that they had been trying to sell the store, ended up being unable to do so, and had to vacate on 30 April 2025.

Here is a bit more shared on a neighboring store's Facebook.

It's a shame, it was a nice little place for many years.

UPDATE 18 September 2025: Found an old bag of theirs:

This place was apparently also known as Day & Night Minimart. I thought it had been around forever, but the Google reviews suggest it was only since around Summer of 2023.

When I took these pictures, it was setting up to be a restaurant called The Flavor Spot, which may be open by now.

I have been in this store a number of times over the years, but what I recall most about is is that on the South side of the lot, there is a very vibrant stand of Wisteria which I took pictures of one year, and which, should I ever find them again, I will post here.

I am generally more of a Walgreens customer, and there is one across the street, which may have played into this closing (the Google reviews suggest other possibilities), but for whatever reason, I always found this store to easier to get into than that one so if I were coming up Saint Andrews Road I might stop in to get toothpaste, or batteries or whatever. The entrance was one of those automatically folding (rather than sliding) doors that I always found a little off-putting, but I suppose it got the job done.

(Hat tip to commenter Cats)

The former 2nd Spin Appliance, now Appliance Home Store has moved from this building at the top of Fontaine Road to the old All South Federal Credit Union building at 7227 Parklane Road.

In the meantime, Scout Motors has taken over this space.

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

For such a small store, this place has been going of of business a surprising amount of time. I believe I noticed the first signs up back in December, and as of the start of June, they were still open. Low Country has been a stalwart in this this little lagoon-centered strip which underwent a major renovation/reconfiguration ten or so years ago. Some longtime shops like The Island Cafe & Deli, The Mole Hole & Spa Sera closed or moved, but Low Country stayed on.

I have gotten a number of new watch batteries installed there, but now I guess I will need to find another place in the area.

I came across the photo of this closed liquor store and couldn't quite recall where I had taken it. A little context and googling shows it was in Friarsgate Plaza, across the parking lot from the old Bi-Lo, and that it was probably called Unlimited Bottles.

If you embiggen the picture, you can still see the face-mask requirement, and the door sign announcing "Something Delicious", the nature of which I can't quite make out.

Here is the Colliers real estate listing for the property.

I find it a bit interesting that the sign announcing that this is Friarsgate Plaza is now gone. I'm not sure if the name remains active or not. The Colliers text doesn't mention it.