This Columbia building used to be a Walmart store. Check out how a new company is using it
For years, people shopped the aisles of Walmart on Bush River Road, browsing for groceries, clothes, toys and more.
But, following the exit of the retail giant from that space several years ago, a new company has now launched operations in that space, and it’s one that plays a role in the tech world.
EPC, Inc., a company that helps businesses and governments repurpose and dispose of information technology equipment — including laptop and desktop computers, tablets and more — is now operating in the roughly 200,000-square-foot former Walmart space at 1326 Bush River Road.
The IT company, headquartered in Missouri, currently employs more than 60 people at the Bush River site and will eventually have nearly 100 workers there. Columbia Mayor Daniel Rickenmann and other city officials toured the facility on Thursday, as EPC marked its opening on Bush River with a ceremonial ribbon cutting.
The former Walmart on Bush River Road closed in February 2021, with the company at the time citing low sales at the location. Just more than a year later, in July 2022, the city’s zoning board passed a measure that helped make way for EPC to eventually occupy the space.
On Thursday, EPC founder Dan Fuller showed city officials and other visitors around the company’s sprawling space on Bush River Road. The company previously had a smaller facility — about 30,000-square-feet — on Clemson Road in Columbia. It combined operations from that facility, and one in Atlanta, into the building on Bush River Road.
“We are in IT asset disposition,” Fuller said. “We are the guys who take decommissioned IT equipment, mainly from corporate users, and either refurbish, resell or recycle it. ... So when a user of a corporate device is done using it, we are the guys that come in and make sure all the data is eradicated properly.”
Rickenmann, Columbia’s first-term mayor, said he was thrilled to see a company move into the former Walmart building and give the big-box space a new life.
“That’s what we want,” the mayor said. “One of the things that dots communities are big boxes that are left vacant. But this is creative, when you come in here and you see this adaptive reuse. ... We want to encourage that. We need to figure out what we can do to help more businesses take advantage of these type of situations. I think adaptive reuse makes a lot of sense.”
Columbia City Councilwoman Tina Herbert attended Thursday’s open house at EPC and recalled how she used to come to the Walmart on Bush River on Sunday mornings, after she attended a church nearby.
Herbert said having a new company doing business in the massive space is a benefit to the area. She noted, as the retail economy shifts and changes in regard to big box stores, malls and other large spaces, there will be opportunities for other types of companies to utilize those buildings.
“This is an example of what can happen in some of these (vacant) spaces,” Herbert said Thursday at EPC.
