{"id":2243,"date":"2010-06-23T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2010-06-23T05:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2012-02-21T00:43:15","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T05:43:15","slug":"bonwit-teller-blacklion-richland-mall-1990-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=2243","title":{"rendered":"Bonwit Teller \/ Dillard's \/ Blacklion \/ The Department Store, Richland Mall: 1990 \/ 2003 \/ 3 September 2005 etc"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Along with White's<\/a> and Parisian<\/a>, Bonwit Teller<\/i> was to be one of the anchors of the new Richland Fashion Mall<\/i> which was to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the original open-air Richland Mall<\/i>.<\/p>\n

It is somewhat typical of that snakebit project that all three chains are now gone. Bonwit Teller<\/i> was a very upscale store, which, according to Wikipedia<\/a> was founded in the 1880s. When the RFM store opened, the chain was new to South Carolina, so I went there once to check it out. I quickly determined that it was not a \"guy place\" at all, and I suspect that even for middle class women, there would have been a hint of Are you sure you are Bonwit Teller material?<\/i> attitude.<\/p>\n

At any rate, the whole chain (17 stores strong at the time) went bankrupt in 1989. Apparently since then, two attempts to revive the brand have come to naught.<\/p>\n

After Bonwit Teller<\/i> went under, the space was taken over by an operation called Blacklion<\/i>, which apparently still exists in some form<\/a>. They put up a number of billboards around town (I recall one in particular by Za's<\/i> on Devine) touting a \"Revolutionary new concept in shopping!\" (that's not an exact quote, but the spirit is the same). Again, I visited the store once, and as far as I could tell, their revolutionary new concept was an upscale flea-market. The place seemed to be a collection of botiquey little indivdually owned kiosks selling upscale crafts. Interestingly as this 2006 press release details<\/a>, one of them, Mountain Manor Gifts<\/i>, did in fact move from Blacklion<\/i> to the Barnyard Flea Market<\/i> out on US-1. There was also an Italian lunch sandwich operation in Blacklion<\/i> whose name escapes me right now, but they moved out of Blacklion<\/i> to a vacant counter-equiped storefront on the second floor on the other side of Belk's<\/i> and carried on for another couple years.<\/p>\n

After Blacklion<\/i> closed, there was some talk of turning the space into apartments for an urban village like the condo space at Sandhill<\/i>. You can see in one of these pictures, the treatments at the end of the Blacklion<\/i> building that were mocked up for that idea, but like many of the plans for Richland Mall<\/i> nothing came of that either.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 23 June 2010<\/b>: Added Dillard's<\/i> and The Department Store<\/i> to the post title based on the comments.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

UPDATE 21 February 2012<\/b>: Added a definite closing date for Black Lion<\/i> based on commenter Andrew's research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along with White's and Parisian, Bonwit Teller was to be one of the anchors of the new Richland Fashion Mall which was to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the original open-air Richland Mall. It is somewhat typical of that snakebit project that all three chains are now gone. Bonwit Teller was a very upscale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[127,84,96,37,5,227,30,4],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-beltline-boulevard","tag-department-store","tag-forest-drive","tag-furniture","tag-historic","tag-midtown","tag-richland-mall","tag-stores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}