Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I noticed this vacant Sonic last weekend in Lexington.

According to The State, it closed around the end of December 2022 in order for the chain to open a new store nearby at 461 Columbia Avenue, a somewhat larger piece of land.

As of yet, there is no new tenant here though it is listed (with a nice picture of the store in operation).

Ratio, the Peruvian tapas restaurant which is a follow-on in this space to Mangia! Mangia! and Shag Bistro has announced that they will be closing after service on 28 June 2025.

The State has the story here.

They are open Wednesday through Saturday, so you have, I believe, 9 more days to catch them.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

Margaret's was on the North side of Garners Ferry out past Mr. Bunky's, and I took these pictures in 2018. It appears from the Yelp reviews (which are pretty positive) that the place probably closed in 2020, and in the event I never got to try it out.

I was not really familiar with Sound & Images, but according to their website, they provide[d] premium audio visual design and installation and event production services.

It's a pretty good sized building across from the Fairgrounds, and as of last weekend did not have any For Sale signs on it. I do note, looking at Google StreetView, and this LoopNet listing, that until sometime in 2023, this was the corporate headquarters for SoftDocs which still seems to be around and whom Google thinks are still in the building...

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

In general I have had a fairly positive impression of Hooters. The chain kind of epitomizes the Breastraunt class of chains, is open late, has good scenery and a decent burger. I did feel the Two Notch Store had gone downhill some the last few times I went there. The chain itself filed Chapter 11 in March with the original plan being to reorganize without closing stores. That didn't work, and apparently now they are moving to a franchaise model with the original founders involved somehow.

Anyway, I don't believe I ever visited this store, which moved here from Broad River Road (which I don't recall visiting either), though I have eaten at the neighboring Applebees, where the view isn't as good, but the burgers are a bit cheaper.

(Hat tips to commenters Larry & MJ)

UPDATE 15 June 2025: Folks in the comments have pointed out that this locathion, like the Two Notch one started out as a Hops brewpub, so I have added that to the post title.

Back in 2012, I did the Zip The Canyons zipline in Ocala Florida, and really had a good time, so when Radical Ropes opened, I thought I eventually might give it a try. Well, setting aside that doing something in your early 50s is a bit less daunting than your early 60s for sure, it turns out Radical Ropes was apparently mostly, or substantially, other non-zipline canopy activities, and looking up at some of these courses makes me go not just 'no', but 'he..ck no'.

The park apparently opened in July 2015. Interestingly, I cannot find any media stories on the closing, but judging from Google reviews, it did not open again after the 2023 season, probably closing some time after Labor Day. As far as I can tell, the place is not for sale, and Google claims it is "temporarily closed", but while it is still generally in reasonable shape, there has obviously been no maintenance going on.

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For many years these stallions pranced in front of B&N Garage & Body Shop on the industrial end of Satchelford Road. I took those pictures back in 2010. Sadly I believe the owner of the shop has now passed on, and the horses have moved to greener pastures. Currently the property is for sale.

I have been meaning to get these pictures up for a while since work at the Hotel Trundle storefront ended up exposing the old marquee for a while.

When I was growing up, the Western Auto at Trenholm Plaza more or less where the Lululemon is now was my goto place for hobby batteries. In particular they had gigantic 1.5 volt carbon-zinc cells with screw tip connectors. I forget whatall I did, but electro-magnets, oddball things with flashlight bulbs and glowplugs figured into it. The stores were ubiquitous for a good while then the whole chain went into decline. I kind of remember that the last one open locally was in the Two Notch Kmart building.

I don't actually remember this location at all from back in the day. Of course we would not have driven downtown given that Trenholm Plaza was much more convenient, but I would have thought I would have some memory of seeing it, which I don't.

According to Wikipedia Western Auto was bought by Sears, which worked out as you would expect, and Sears sold most of it to Advance Auto Parts with the chain basically going defunct by 2003.

Lita's Treats moved to this location from the Dutch Square food court in 2021. On 8 May a car drove into their storefront, closing them down temporarily. Luckily neither anyone in the store nor the dirver was hurt, which definitely was not a given. According to Lita's Facebook page, the damage is more extensive than they originally thought, so it's not clear when they will reopen, though they plan to. In the meantime, they have a store on Killian Road.

WIS has the story.

(Hat tip to commenter Dennis)

Hard Bean was the follow-up in this building to Maurice's Piggy Park which closed in November of 2023.

Hard Bean was here in the summer of 2024 until April of this year when they announced they were moving to Lexington. Apparently the new address will be 129 Cromer Road, which appears to be on the other side of Sunset from the Chick-Fil-A (though back a bit further).

I don't know the reasons for the move of course, but I've always thought this storefront and the next door one are hard to get in and out of, plus of course, there is a Dunkin with coffee right there as well.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)