{"id":406,"date":"2009-05-10T23:39:20","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T04:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=406"},"modified":"2009-05-10T23:42:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-11T04:42:00","slug":"woodhill-mall-garners-ferry-road-early-2000s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/?p=406","title":{"rendered":"Woodhill Mall, Garners Ferry Road: early 2000s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Woodhill Mall<\/i> was another of Columbia's hard luck malls. There were three of them which fell on hard times more or less together: Decker Mall<\/i>, Bush River Mall<\/i> and Woodhill Mall<\/i>. Decker and Bush River were obviously \"sister\" malls, with similar designs, and both anchored by a Kroger<\/i> on one end and a Richway<\/i> on the other.<\/p>\n

Woodhill<\/i> had a different design and store mix though it did include a Richway<\/i> as well. If I recall correctly, the layout of Woodhill Mall<\/i> was basically a 'T' shape. If you stood on Garners Ferry road and looked down onto the mall, the 'T' would be laid on its side rotated 90-degrees, such that the crossbar would be perpendicular to Garners Ferry, and the \"leg\" would extend out to the left.<\/p>\n

The anchor store at the top (nearest to Garners Ferry) of the crossbar was Tapp's<\/i>, a local stalwart which was headquartered downtown, but which also had large stores at Dutch Square<\/i> and Woodhill<\/i> (and a small Tapp's Twig<\/i> store at Trenholm Plaza). Continuing down the crossbar, were a number of stores that I can't recall, but also a book store, and a record store.<\/p>\n

Where the crossbar hit the leg, there was a mini food court. I'm pretty sure there was a Chik-Fil-A<\/i> there, and a small sandwich & burger shop which made The State's<\/i> list of best burgers in town in the late 1980s. (I want to say it was called \"Jonathans\", but I'm not sure). If you continued down the leg towards Richway<\/i> there was a video arcade, though it was never as good as some of the others in town.<\/p>\n

It's hard to say exactly why these things happen, but for some reason, Woodhill Mall<\/i> always failed to thrive. I suppose the closing of Tapp's<\/i> was a big blow, but it was clear for years that the place was going downhill -- it was never unsafe or anything like that, but stores would close and not be replaced, or be replaced by one-off local stores which had no reasonable hope of surviving.<\/p>\n

One thing that the mall did have going for it, for some reason, was it's Santa. Apparently a good number of people considered him superior to the other mall Santa's, for reasons which escape me now, but while that's nice, it's not enough to save a mall. At some point, the managers decided to embrace whatever would bring in a few dollars, and the whole back side of the mall was converted from retail to \"self storage\". They also opened a major recycling center behind the mall.<\/p>\n

In the end, the only thing the mall had going for it was the remaining anchor (Richway<\/i> which converted to Gold Star<\/i> which converted to Target<\/i>), and that wasn't enough.<\/p>\n

I think it was early in the 2000s when I was in town and decided to take some old magazines and papers from my father's to recycle. I drove out to Woodhill Mall<\/i> and found it totally gone! I was shocked, but not on reflection surprised.<\/p>\n

Since then, the property has been redeveloped into an two upscale strips. The Target<\/i> (it came back) strip apparently called just Woodhill<\/i>, and a strip at the top of the old mall parking lot (against Garners Ferry) called The Shoppes at Woodhill<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I believe at this point, only the building with Hampton Hill<\/i> and the old automated post office are left from the buildings of the original mall complex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woodhill Mall was another of Columbia's hard luck malls. There were three of them which fell on hard times more or less together: Decker Mall, Bush River Mall and Woodhill Mall. Decker and Bush River were obviously \"sister\" malls, with similar designs, and both anchored by a Kroger on one end and a Richway on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,5,9,3,4],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-historic","tag-landmark","tag-restaurants","tag-stores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","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=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/columbiaclosings.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}