H amrick’s will close its store at MarketPointe Mall on Bush River Road in about a month as it prepares to move to a new location.
The store will reopen in July at the former Circuit City site at nearby 1950 Bush River Road.
The store is moving after 20 years at MarketPointe as its lease expires, spokeswoman Hayden Trnavsky said.
The new building – slightly larger than the existing store – will give Hamrick’s better visibility as it fronts the road near Interstate 20. That should help the store draw in new customers, she said.
“It was just a great location for us,” she said.
Renovations to the new building, now vacant, already have begun, Trnavsky said.
The current location will close June 16, and the goal is to open the new store within the first week of July, she said.
Hamrick’s is a family-owned clothing store based in Gaffney. It has 20 stores in South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia.
Office Depot bows out of Harbison
Office Depot will close its store on Columbia’s Harbison Boulevard on June 16 as its lease expires and the office-supply chain puts its focus on smaller stores.
The Boca Raton, Fla.,-based chain has been remodeling its stores to make them smaller – between 5,000 and 15,000 square feet in most cases – spokeswoman Julianne Carelli wrote in an email. The Harbison area store is 23,500 square feet, one of the largest in the chain, she wrote.
Eleven employees will lose their jobs, Carelli wrote. They will be offered a severance package, placement services to find other jobs and other company-subsidized benefits.
Shop shorts
• Fuel Fitness and Dance recently opened at 300 Long Pointe Lane in Northeast Richland. The studio offers zumba, yoga and pilates, as well as a variety of dance classes. Fuel also offers aerial silks classes, in which participants are taught dance moves performed while suspended in the air from ribbons – Cirque du Soleil style.
• Columbia’s Applebee’s restaurants have been purchased by franchisee The Apple Gold Group. The Raleigh-based group bought 32 locations in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, bringing its total ownership to 119 restaurants and making it the second-largest Applebee’s franchisee in the world. The company bought the restaurants from Greenville-based Apple J.


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