Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

As I remarked to my sister, they have been closing this store for years. You could say it started when they did away with the roasted nuts counter, part of the classic heritage that had followed them from Harden Street, but that half-joking aside, it was really apparent in recent years that the store was being hollowed out: there was less and less stock, and more and more empty space. It never got as bad as Belk at Dutch Square with a whole floor abandoned, but it was impossible not to notice. Then, several years ago, they decided it wasn't worth keeping the store open for all the hours that the mall was, and you'd find the mall doors drawn during normal business hours. This year, Sears as a whole finally put Going Concern language in their financial report, and when the latest list of store closings came out, I can't imagine anyone was surprised to see this store on it.

The closing of Sears will leave Columbia Mall with only one anchor store, and Macy's isn't looking that robust either lately.

I've always thought it odd that there were two Bank of America locations on Two Notch so close to each other. This one is on the west side of O'Neil Court, and the other is at 7405 on the east side of O'Neil Court (and in the Lowe's parking lot).

Apparently they have recently regularized the situation by closing this one down, with the exception of ATM service. It's not clear to me if two ATMs will remain on the lot. The day I noticed that the drive-through lanes were closed and took these pictures, something was going on at the "back" ATM and access to its drive-up lane was blocked though the machine appeared to be running.

The lot itself is fairly big, and opens on both Two Notch and O'Neil Court -- I can't imagine that they plan to leave it vacant with just ATM(s) for long. I expect they will put it on the market at some point.

Commenter Bart Laber reports that this whole company is gone as of February, and indeed their website is now just a "parked" page, though the old page can still be found on the Wayback Machine. Judging from that, it appears to have been an SC company as the initials would imply.

The address given on the door sign is the old Shoney's etc building in Dentsville.

(Hat tip to commenter Bart Laber)

Ultimately I can't go regularly to any place that does not have fresh brewed ice tea. Somehow or other I ended up going to this Which Wich twice however. I forget what brought me back the second time -- perhaps I was thinking my subpar first experience was a fluke. In the event, they managed to get my order wrong both times, despite having a system based on minutely specifying orders in writing. That, along with the tea and the odd decor means this chain is just not a concept that's up my alley.

(Hat tip to commenter cheryl)

These are admittedly not great pictures, but you get the picture. I noticed some time ago that this longtime Two Notch Road staple had closed, but somehow just got around to getting some shots a few weeks ago.

There used to be a numbe rof little open air markets in the Two Notch and Dentsville area, but I think this was the last of them. As you can see from the little placard behind the fence, they were part of the Certified SC Grown branding for roadside markets, and in fact you can still see their page on the SCDA website, which doesn't seem to notice that they are gone and helpfully explains:

Primary Products Sold: Tomatoes, corn, string beans, bell pepper, okra, cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, squash, Kentucky Wonders, green peanuts, strawberries, peaches, watermelon, cantaloupe, plums, blueberries, and honey.

I don't have any phonebooks to hand to pin a closing date here, so I'm going to guess 2015.

UPDATE 22 April 2017: Changed closing date from "2015" to "Fall 2016" based on the comments.

UPDATE 7 June 2017 -- Now open as Sara's Produce:

I was sure I had done a closing for 230 Forum Drive before, but looking at Alphabetical Closings, I don't see anything.

At any rate, H. H. Gregg is the latest casualty of the ongoing Amazon-era retail meltdown. With the closing of Circuit City, I thought that the appliance & electronics big box market would be able to support the two remaining stores, Gregg and Best Buy, but in the event I guess not. For that matter, it still remains to be seen if *one* store is sustainable long term.

I believe this is the only H. H. Gregg I have ever been in, and I was only in it once. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, just checking it out, and as I recall, my impression was that I liked Best Buy better.

Here is a very interesting article from The Indianapolis Business Journal about this Indianapolis based company, its storied history, and the path to bankruptcy this March 7th and then quickly after that, the slide into liquidation:

In the early 1980s, when Detroit-based appliance retailer Fretter Inc. entered Indianapolis and challenged HHGregg on its home turf, HHGregg bought full-page ads in the Detroit newspapers hawking its own merchandise and offering free shipping.

Those were heady days for HHGregg, which built a loyal following in Indianapolis with an unwavering focus on customer service; an army of well-paid, full-time commissioned salespeople; and an avalanche of advertising that resonated with consumers.

It was a winning formula for founders H.H. and Fansy Gregg, who opened the first store at 4930 N. Keystone Ave. in 1955, and for the family members who helped build the chain to more than 200 locations in the decades that followed.

“The customer-first attitude came from Mr. and Mrs. Gregg,” said Ken Beckley, an HHGregg executive from 1983 to 2001 who also was the face of the company’s advertising. “When I was there, we preached to employees that job No. 1 is to take good care of the customer. If you do that, profits will follow. We never put profits first. We put customers first, and it paid off.”

The strategy helped fell a long list of rivals—including Fretter and Highland Superstores Inc., another Detroit chain that dove into Indianapolis in the early 1980s. Both firms later skidded into bankruptcy, with a Highland executive calling Indianapolis its “Death Valley.” In 1998, Circuit City Stores Inc., then a retail powerhouse, arrived in Indianapolis, only to land in liquidation a decade later.

Now, done in by a long list of problems—including overexpansion and a collapse in sales of consumer electronics, once its biggest business—HHGregg is joining the trash heap of failed appliance and electronics retailers.

The company’s demise has been unfolding in slow motion for years, but the final unraveling came with breathtaking speed.

Reminds me of Hemingway's famous quote.

Aside from Gregg, this can't be very good for Sandhill either.

Well, the last time I drove out to Sandhill, I got a picture (above) of the vacant Wet Seal storefront so that I could add it as an update to the Wet Seal post, which I distinctly remembered making..

Except that apparently never happened..

So anyway, Wet Seal has closed. The teen retailer went into bankruptcy in 2015, and never really made a go of it again after coming out. Business Insider has the story. The final closing was announced on 20 January 2017, and the first pictures were taken on 29 January, so I would suspect the end came for this store in early or mid February.

Somebody has bought the web site, but it's not clear exactly for what.

Given the amount of unleased space like this in Village At Sandhill proper, I was surprised to still see new buildings going up, as was discussed briefly in the comments for Family Christian Stores.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

Well, as has been noted in Have Your Say a good many times already, Family Christian Stores is closings all of the chains stores and going into liquidation.

USA Today has a good overview, and Gleanings has a bit more detail and Christian business community focus.

I had thought I recalled that this chain started as Zondervan (who once had a store at Columbia Mall though I never did a closing), and these articles confirm it. The Zondervan brothers founded the business in 1931, giving them an 85 year run, which is certainly not bad. In 2012, the current management brought out the already money losing business and reorganized as a non-profit, but even on that basis the cash flow was not enough, and the chain filed for Chapter 11 in 2015, but even with shedding a lot of debt, the re-organization never was able to stay above water and apparently a lot of the debt shed was owed to small enterprises which could not afford to stay in business without the owed payments, so a bad situation all the way around.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew I think)

It looks like this old gas station at the corner of Two Notch and Germany Street is vacant again.
T T & B was the follow-on operation to Auto Selection, which was the follow-on to K & C Radiator Center, so the car theme has been pretty consistent.

Amusingly, one of the google search suggestions that came up as I was typing this address was "convert to decimal". (Which would be 22 for those who care..)

Anyway, here's another phone store on the move. This one from this building to a brand new building constructed after the demolition of the former buildings at 10202 Two Notch.

(Hat tip to commenter mike)

UPDATE 27 March 2017 -- The new location: