Is my area safe? (Columbia, Clemson: middle-class, Home Depot, safe area)

[yousocute08]

I recently moved off of Rosewood Ave near Deerwood St. is this a safe area for walking around?

Also, what are the best mall/movie theaters in Columbia?

Thanks everyone!

[waccamatt]

I used to know someone that lived on Deerwood Street and I never heard them complain about their neighborhood. There are several theaters close to you with Regal Cinemas at Midtown in Forest Acres and Wynnsong on Forest Drive. There is also the Nickelodeon Theater downtown on Main at Pendleton, which shows many foreign and independent films. For shopping, Five Points is close to you, though it isn't a mall. There is Midtown in Forest Acres, which has a limited number of stores. The larger "malls" are Columbiana Center in Harbison, Columbia Place on Two Notch and Parklane and The Village at Sandhill in the Spring Valley/Pontiac area, which is a lifestyle center as opposed to an indoor mall. There are many smaller shopping areas like Dutch Square and Trenholm Plaza, too.

[yousocute08]

Thanks! Are all of these malls pretty safe? In Northern VA there are definitely some malls that you want to avoid...so I wanted to make sure we knew any down here too.

[waccamatt]

Originally Posted by yousocute08

Thanks! Are all of these malls pretty safe? In Northern VA there are definitely some malls that you want to avoid...so I wanted to make sure we knew any down here too.

I don't find any of them to be unsafe, but you might find Columbia Place to be a bit edgier than you would like. I don't think you'd mind any of the others.

[Chi2Midlands]

Originally Posted by yousocute08

Thanks! Are all of these malls pretty safe? In Northern VA there are definitely some malls that you want to avoid...so I wanted to make sure we knew any down here too.

We moved from Northern Virginia over 3 years ago and know what you are talking about. We specifically lived in West Springfield and definitely had our preferences of which malls to shop at even though others might be closer.

I'm going to take a stab and try to compare Columbia-area malls with Northern VA ones:

(1) Columbiana Centre on Harbison Blvd. in NW Columbia/Irmo has generally been the premier regional mall for nearly 20 years. In that sense it is a pint-sized Tysons Corner (i.e., it plays a similar role as Tysons in the Columbia area but since we are far smaller metro, it is considerably smaller - probably about 1/3 the size). It's a one-level mall that has four anchors - Sears, JCPenney, Belk, and Dillard's (the latter two are somewhat upscale regional chains comparable to Macy's). The Columbiana/Harbison area also has some the region's most congested traffic conditions due to dense commercial and retail development surrounding the mall and nearby highway and arterial roads that don't quite have adequate capacity. In that sense it is also a bit reminiscent of Tysons but again, nowhere near as bad since we are a smaller, lower-profile metro.

(2) Columbia Place Mall (formerly Columbia Mall and many residents still refer to it as that) was the region's premier mall until Columbiana opened. The mall is located on the near-Northeast Columbia side of town, and it's about 30 years old, and the surrounding area has transitioned from a fairly solid middle-to-somewhat upper middle class to more lower-income areas (unincorporated NE Columbia and the Decker Blvd. corridor) but with solidified upper-middle-class core not too far away to the south (Arcadia Lakes/Forest Acres). Access is good to major arterials like Two Notch Road (US 1) and highways like I-77/I-20/SC-277, which is why it was probably located there. On the one hand, because of the surrounding areas, it greatly reminds me of Springfield Mall, a once-solid mall in a once-solid middle class suburban area 20 years ago, but as you probably know it has significantly deteriorated with crime, gangs, and the past management did not maintain/update/refurbish the property at all and had become an unpleasant place to shop (hopefully the new owners will follow through eventually and make it almost another Tysons as planned). On the other hand, Columbia Place has thankfully had much better management, such that even though there are issues with crime/gangs/rowdiness, etc., and some tenants have fled for newer/richer suburban areas, they have kept the mall looking up-to-date and clean, and they have a County Sheriff's office right in the mall to keep it relatively safe and pleasant. I personally don't really like to shop at Columbia Place, but I don't have a big deal going there in the daytime if there is something there that I really need (e.g., they have have closest Sears to my house). So I have more preferred options than Columbia Place, but I don't dread it to the extent I dreaded Springfield Mall.

(3) The Village at Sandhill (VAS) in far Northeast Richland County at Two Notch and Clemson Roads. This is the flashy, new big kid on the block in one of the hottest suburban growth regions around Columbia. It is not truly a mall (and they're not building big indoor malls almost anywhere in the US anyways), but is one of these new outdoor lifestyle centers. The closest analogy I can think of is Fairfax Corner, but larger, and in a further-out, newer suburban location. So location-wise, alternatively you could compare it to Dulles Town Center if it were turned inside-out. There are only two anchors - JCPenney (which relocated from Columbia Place several miles down Two Notch Road( and Belk, but the trend in large retail complexes like new lifestyle centers is relying more on non-department store anchors. So VAS has things like a 16-screen theater (the largest in the Columbia area), a large indoor sports complex ("The Plex"), and a couple of unique restaurants. Somewhat like Dulles Town Center, the "core" of upscale and other discretionary retail stores is orbited, beyond the large swaths of parking lots, by stand-alone chain restaurants, strip centers, etc. that offer more "day-to-day" needs. For example, there is a Super Bi-Lo supermarket (comparable to a big Safeway), large furniture stores, an HH Gregg applicance store, Cracker Barrel, a Home Depot, Old Navy, TJ Maxx, a drive-through Starbucks (there is a standard "sit-down" one in the "core"), a handfull of banks, etc. And these are the ones that are still inside the development. Outside the VAS development, across Two Notch Road, there is what I would call a sort of "power center" (basically a strip mall on steroids consisting of large big-box retailers - think of Fair Lakes) that has a Target, Circuit City, Bed Bath & Beyond, Michaels, Kroger supermarket, and further down from there is a Lowe's and a Super Wal-Mart. So while the form of this whole greater suburban retail district is different than Columbiana/Harbison, it generally has the same function - a relatively upscale niche retail core (whether lifestyle center or indoor mall) surrounded by larger mundane retail establishments (big boxes, chain restaurants, banks, supermarkets, etc).

Sorry, that was long - but hopefully this somewhat accurately gets the gist of what each mall offers.

[yousocute08]

Thank you, I appreciate the length! We lived in Burke, so your descriptions were really helpful and put things in perspective.

[mettler]

If you are just looking to take a walk you can meander thru the neighborhood towards Rosewood Park..there will be a lot of stuff going on there.

[Chi2Midlands]

Originally Posted by yousocute08

Thank you, I appreciate the length! We lived in Burke, so your descriptions were really helpful and put things in perspective.

Yeah, don't be surprised if you run into other former Northern Virginians down here! We actually lived right near the Shoppers Food Warehouse & Rolling Valley Park-n-Ride on Old Keene Mill Road, so we were right on the border with Burke. And our next door neighbor here in Columbia once attended Lake Braddock High School. Small world!