Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well here's an interesting case: The Island Bar & Grill closed while I was avoiding it, and a new place opened, and closed all before I noticed it due to staying away...

This corner slot in Village Shops has been a number of places over the years. One I recall specifically is Villa Katrina, a Mexican eatery which, I believe, still has a location in Myrtle Beach. Anyway, the Island Bar & Grill had been there a number of years, and was an OK local option for the most part with decent burgers and other bar food, and a nice deck when the weather wasn't sweltering. That gradually started to change in recent years, leading to a number of sub-par dining experiences to the point the the place finally got taken off the list when I went there with my college room-mate & his wife and they lacked half the ingredients for her order without ever mentioning that fact until plopping it, basically inedible, on the table in front of her. After a previous visit with esentially no service, that was the final straw. You can see similar experiences in the Google reviews.

Anyway, while I was avoiding it like the plague, the place apparently closed around Spring of 2025 (Hey Google! -- You obviously know the exact date for every review, what's with this "A Year Ago" stuff?), and re-opened as Pawleys Back Deck, something I did not know until I wondered about the lack of cars in the parking lot and went to take a look. The reviews for that operation are somewhat better, but they seem to have left business in an involuntary fashion at the end of March.

By the way, if you are looking at the plaza sign, Tuscany Bistro closed at least a year ago if not more and was replaced with a Fish Camp.

This little building on Fernandina Road is still there, although apparently the state was not good at the time of these pictures back in 2011, and has apparently been a number of things since the Wellness Center left, though from Google Streetview the only signs I can read well enough to be sure are for a daycare center (or possibly two daycare centers).

As for the Wellness Center, it was a "Chiropractic, Nutrition & Acupuncture" clinic, and apparently either reflagged as, or sold the practice to Heinen Chiropractic Center. You can see their last archived web page here, and Heinen's first one here.

As far as I can tell from Google StreetView, this old-school auto upholstery operation was here, with its original building ad detailing from 1956 up until around 2016. At that time it was taken over by Studio 2LR,

a boutique architecture and interior design firm

who elected to keep the vintage paint-job, though they have apparently added some neat robitechture on the back side of the building.

This place does not have a lot of google reviews, so it's hard to say when it closed, but judging by Google Streetview, probably around 2015. The building itself seemes to have been razed around 2020, and the lot is now empty, so it's too late to get your salmon fix.

These pictures come from April 2010.

Well in some way's this is a complete surprise, and in others it's not unexpected.

To my memory this was the first Moe's location in Columbia, and opened shortly after I moved back to town. When it opened, it was a super place. The crew was well-trained and topnotch-on execution, and the burritos were tasty, well made, and never blew-out. The chips were always crisp and the salsa-bar well stocked, and the ice tea was some of the best I have had in fast-food: brewed strong and always very fresh. The menu names were quirky,but I quickly latched on to the Art Vandelay and I could order that and just let them make it as stated with very minimum customization.

While they place catered to adults to some extent -- for years beer was a beverage option, it also catered heavily to kids with one night every week dedicated to balloon animals and face-painting with special outside providers who would stop by and entertain the always packed dining room. They also had a promotion for regular folks, Moe Monday, a day when burritoes could be had for really quite economical outlays.

In general, I would make this my lunch stop on Mondays & Wednesdays, and life was good.

Gradually things started to change. The initial staff drifted away, and the new hires were noticably not as good. They stoped hiring the face painters and balloon lady, and the food quality started to go down. Sometimes the rice would be crispy, sometimes the lettuce would be wilted, or they would replace the shredded lettuce with romaine, which really doesn't work. The chips were often burnt or chewy and there were long-standing issues with bad smells in the drink machine area. Finally they stopped Moe Monday. For me, the nadir came when I stepped into the store and was the only customer, yet every table was dirty. I had cut my visits in half by that point, and was considering dropping it from the rotation entirely, but there were signs of hope along with more mixed ones. On the plus side, they got back people who had some idea what they were doing and didn't roll a burrito that would fall apart immediately, they also dumped the Freestyle machines that always got my hands wet and always had ice issues replacing them with standard fountains and a chewy ice dispenser. On the minus side, they dropped all the traditional item names and made it an ordeal to specify every single ingredient on your burrito, plus they tended to front-load ingredients, so if you were getting a little of everything, you would end up with a massive burrito that would, again, tend to fall apart. The chips were still uneven, but the quality of the ingredients had come back up some.

On the whole, I would have said things were stablizing, but when I pulled in today, the crew were loading up the trucks with all the mobile fixtures, and carting everything to the Devine location, a store which has its own issues (for instance, there's never any salt), but in general has a pretty good crew.

Oh well, it was nice (for about half the time) while it lasted.

This post is mainly for the mural, which vanished sometime between September 2023 & September 2025. As I reported before, The Cigar Box moved to State Street in West Columbia in September of 2019, and closed around 12 April of 2020, which was a bad time to be running any kind of business. The Free Times story touches tangentially on this location, but says nothing about the mural.

I took these pictures back in 2016 and forgot about them. The building is now Columbia Fire & Safety, but was apparently Grahl from 1971 into 2016. Here's some LoopNet information on the site.

This one is a bit odd in that there is Maaco signage up on the old AutoPros location, but the place is up for sale again -- and I can't ever recall it operating as a Maaco. Furthermore, no google searches turn up Maaco at this location, they all come back with the Decker Boulevard location as the closest match: No indication that Maaco was planning to move here, or did move here.

If anyone can recall seeing it open, or knows more, chime in.

I believe this Speedway started off as a Hess many years ago and changed brands to Speedway when Marathon bought Hess's retail business around 2017. Despite not having a light, the location is pretty good with easy access from north-bound US-17, and a back connection to the Blockade cross street. However, for whatever reason, the place had not really been kept up, and when I went in there last year, it looked really dingy and threadbare. According to this Facebook thread, with the opening of the new Refuel to the south (which I agree with one poster there has an awful location), they weren't making any money, and the rent was going up. There's some speculation fast-food may be going in, but there doesn't seem to be anything official yet.

This location, which I later learned was the final resting place of The Basil Pot, first featured here as Tio's, and then again when it was Which Wich? with that operation leaving in late 2023, and Sub Station II moving in shortly after that.

The State has a story which tells very little more than what is on the door sign. I find it somewhat interesting that at close to two months after the closing, the fixtures are still in place, so apparently the place has not been sold.

(Hat tip to commenter Guy)