Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

A little hard to get a good picture of this place due to the tree, but this is the Sandhill location of Gymboree.

Assuming they stick to their announced plan, both this place and the Richland Mall location should start their final closing sales tomorrow (18 July 2017).

UPDATE 7 October 2017 -- Still open but posting a closing sign & sale now:

I was at Sandhill the other day and noticed that this Regions Bank on the outer perimeter was closed.

I see a google review from four months ago indicating it was already closed then, so I'm putting the date as January 2017 though that may be after the actual date. I've always thought Regions Bank was an odd name. It was especially odd when BOA was still Nations Bank because then it sounded kind of copycat. Now it just seems nonspecific.

UPDATE 26 June 2017 -- As reported in the comments, almost open again as a Navy Federal Credit Union:

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)

Update 4 May 2022: Now Mimsy's a Vegan & West African Fusion restaurant:

Also adding map icon.

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)

East Coast Pizzeria was the follow-on operation to Brixx in this Sandhill corner apartment block. Honestly, I was not impressed the one time I ate there. It seemed like the ordering process to just get the toppings I wanted on a pizza was unnecessarily complicated, and the resulting pizza was nothing special. Perhaps I should have given it another shot, but the reason I was a semi-regular at Brixx was because they were open late-night, which East Coast was not.

It will be interesting to see if Sandhill is able to get another restaurant in here. Probably the residents upstairs will be just as glad if not, as Brixx set the place on fire once..

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

This closing is a fallout from the chain's bankruptcy which includes the shuttering of 113 of its 739 US stores:

If you're a teenager shopping for clothes, you're probably not going to Aeropostale, a fact that became glaringly obvious when the apparel retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Wednesday.

Maybe they shouldn't have put stale in their name..

The location of trees in front of this Sandhill storefront, and the desire not to be in the window's reflection made getting good pictures iffy, but you can see the standardized Store Closing and discount placards that show up at many of these managed sell-outs.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

Gold's Gym moved into the old Ashley Furniture Homestore location in 2010.

Now the local operation which had the Gold's franchaise has decided to rebrand their five Columbia locations as MUV Fitness (I won't attempt the heavy-metal umlaut):

I don't know why Gold's didn't want to expand, but they have apparently been having their own problems at the corporate level: Gold's Gym President and EVP Leave, New CEO Appointed.

(Hat tip to commenters James R and Andrew)

I did not know that Arizona's was a chain, but they had at least two restaurants in South Carolina, one here at Sandhill and the other in Greenville. Both were bought out in late July by a North Carolina outfit and rebranded as JP's 4 Corners.

When Arizona's opened, I looked over the menu, and could not see a reason to go, and so never did.

Apparently the general concept has not changed a lot:

Looking at the menu, I get the same feeling I had looking at Arizona's menu: How is this Southwestern?

Western, I certainly see, but I thought Southwestern was supposed to have a dash of Mexican. That's got to be more than just invoking chipolte in a sauce. The Free Times in fact lists JP's under Mexican, but don't see it.

(Hat tip to commenter Jason)