Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Friends House (no apostrophe apparently) was the follow-on in this Publix plaza suite to Chen's.

Commenter James R notes that the rent on this place went up and the owners opted not to renew. Currently the storefront is empty.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

This former Dairy Queen had been the Eggroll Station for 35 years before it closed in December due to the this, the adjacent Capitol Square shopping center, and the old Al's Upstairs location being bought for redevelopment.

I never ate at this place, which is connected to Eggroll Station / Eggroll Chen on Crowson, but my sister reported it as very good.

You can read about the closure and redevelopment in The State, The Post & Courier or Westmetro News.

As for the redevlopment, it sounds very ambitious, but one property I conspicuously did not see mentioned was House Of Raeford, which, if the breeze is right, can put quite a kibosh on activities in the area.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

This building, on Broad River Road just North of I-20, has featured here several times, first as an Applebee's and most recently as Tha River. After that, it started to set up as a Blaney's, a local wing chain with several Midlands locations.

It may be too soon to apply the "Never Opened" rubric, but given that the Fire Marshall considers this a vacant building, and given that the posted door notice is from October 2025 with a re-inspection mooted for December 2025 and that it is still posted, I would say that things don't look promising.

Francesca's has filed Chapter 11 and is closing all its stores and ceasing operation. You can read about it here. This particular location is in Columbiana Centre, not too far from Barnes & Noble, and has already started its closing sale. I don't know how long that will last, but they look to have some pretty steep discounts already.

This closing was reported by commenter Tom who mentions they also have a Sandhill location, but if they do, I have been unable to find anything about it and it does not appear to be on their site map. There was also a Trenholm Plaza location, but in the event it turns out that closed already several years ago, and I did not even notice.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

Apparently Scrub Trendz sold out to Spartanburg based The Scrub Shop in 2023, maintaining this Seven Oaks shop with the original signage until recently when they moved to 2101 Main Street (at Elmwood).

This storefront, which apparently consists of three suites, is now up for new tenants.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

This Ashland Park storefront has been a number of restaurants over the years, from Low Country Cafe to Steve's. Full Bellies moved in after Steve's closed in April of 2025, and closed just before Christmas of the same year. You can see their farewell message here.

I had to check out the phones. They are in very good shape, but there is no dial-tone. If you look closely, you can see that the nameplate on them is for Blackbeard's Seafood, a place I never heard of and have not featured here.

(Hat tip to commenter Heath)

Shay Beauty Supply was in the bottom corner of Seven Oaks Shopping Center, and looks to have opened in March of 2022, as marked by this introductory video.

I don't have a real closing date, but given that the last Google reivew mentions the place being closed when it should have been open, and the fact that the last Wayback Machine capture is for February of 2025, I am going to say "Early 2025".

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

I have only been in a Freddy's once, at the Sunset location and I got a milkshake which I thought was pretty good.

The State reported the opening of this location in 2018, with the chain representing that

The surrounding residential neighborhoods around Lake Murray make the location a great fit for Freddy’s.

I guess in the event eight years later perhaps not so much.

Here is The State story on the closing.

(Hat tip to commenter Kenneth)

This former Game Crazy switched over to Gamestop in 2010, and now with the latest wave of closings for that chain stands vacant.

WLTX reports that Gamestop plans to close more than 470 stores this year which honestly seems like that won't leave many, if any. I'm not a gamer, but I have to say that after spending hours trying to set up an Xbox for a gift Christmas a year ago, the idea of a store where you can go and just buy stuff rather than futzing around with downloading and accounts seems very appealing.

(Hat tip to commenter Lavender)

We're a women's resale store that buys gently used brand name clothing!

As commenter Andrew mentions, this Harbison Center resale store is in the process of closing. I don't know much else about it, except that I am very suspicious that its address is not really "Suite WXYZ", despite that information being given several different places online.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)