A Big Week for Main Street?

Walmart, they say, can kill a Main Street. Can an old-fashioned general store bring people back?

Mast General Store is still wrapped in brown paper as of this weekend, getting ready for its Wednesday grand opening. But several blocks of Main Street were lined with cars on a Saturday afternoon, even without the store. Lots of people were there, to visit the museum and to take advantage of Columbia Open Studios. My niece and I made it two more.

We started at the Tapp's Building....

My niece, Morgan, asking if this work is for sale, inside the Tapp's building

made our way by Free Times and Frame of Mind......

In front of the Free Times offices on Main

toward the Arcade.....

The Arcade, a great space...

where artists now have studios.....

Inside the Arcade
 

then to the "Who Shot Rock and Roll" exhibit at the Columbia Museum of Art.....

The Columbia Museum of Art

before snooping around the front stoop of Mast General Store and the new home of The Nickelodeon, next door.

The Mast General Store, in the old Lourie's Building. The Nick will be in the space to the right.

When skirt! photographer Molly Harrell moved to Columbia from Charleston, she decided to live on Main Street in the Tapp's Building. She happens to be part of a feature in the Sunday edition of The State newspaper that's all about Columbia's potential for a downtown renaissance.  What do you think? Can it happen?