Harper's Choice Village Center — Attraction in Columbia

Overall, a disappointing experience - due largely to its anchor store - Safeway. Carts are often left all over the parking lot - and the store itself almost always elicits frustration in anyone who shops there. It's understaffed, often has NO full service registers and unsurprisingly, has an enormously high employee turnover rate. I've lived here 25 years - the store managers come and go like a revolving door. It's hard to have a good village center when the primary store it features is this dysfunctional.

Also - one get's the feeling the village center really carries a disdain for the community. There are few benches to sit on - they've removed all tables from the courtyard, so gathering to eat a pizza or sandwich from any of the village restaurants is discouraged, and even the village center is locked up on the shopping side - sending the message they definitely don't want to be open to the people who shop there - you have to walk all the way to the other side of the building to get in.

In short, the village center is largely unwelcoming to the very village it serves. If it wasn't it would be more inviting to the community. One gets the feeling that KIMKO could care less about THIS neighborhood - and is really more interested in what it can get out of town center and its other properties - we've been left behind and are well past due for renovations.

Don't believe me? Compare the feel in Harpers Choice to the other village centers and you'll see...

Turn around. Don't come here. Nothing in this shopping center is worth visiting. You'll either get jumped in the parking lot or be harassed for money by the transient homeless. If you're thinking about living here then do yourself a favor and look elsewhere. Drive a few extra minutes to literally ANY other shopping center to get what you need.

And if you're thinking that "they wouldn't leave a review if it was good" then think again because I would have left a good review if I could find a single "good" thing to say about this place. BP is insanely overpriced and Hunan Diamond uses four day old food. Safeway cant staff the store, and the Dunkin employees would rather be tuggin their pud in the back.

Come here if you want to see the opposite side of "Columbia is the safest place to live". I've seen stabbings and kids being jumped. Hopeless drug addicts shooting up on the street and people that belong in mental institutions allowed to run wild within...

I am going to confess my shameful secret. I can't tell you much about Harper's Choice overall because I was there for Maiwand Kabob, which is awe inspiringly tasty and you should go there. But I know there's a grocery and gas and free parking. Columbia normal standards, which means good grade suburban. The Harper in question was a South Carolina lawyer who relocated to Baltimore. Columbia has a unified look thanks to Rouse development but there's history in the names. But I digreas. Easy to find, plenty of parking, open air strip mall, clean and well maintained. If your shopping need is there, go in comfort. Columbia is a diverse upper middle class development so racially friendly, though economically aware. Access by car, bike, or on foot. I can't tell you about public transit, no help desk, and I don't know about public toilets but most strip malls are skimpy on...