Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I don't eat at Lizard's Thicket that often, but it's good Southern comfort food. I recall working in Kansas for about a month once, and being so glad when I got back, drove out of the airport here and saw the Liz on Airport Boulevard. There are times when only field-peas-over-rice will do.

Someone described Lizard's Thicket here in the comments of some post or another as a "hermit crab restaurant", ie: one that likes to let another restaurant build the building and fail and then moves into the empty shell. It strikes me as a sound strategy, but that being the case, I can't speak to what was in this building before Liz. This particular store was a bit unusual in that it was one of the two Lizes closest together of all those I am aware of (the other is just a mile or so down Two Notch towards Spring Valley). It was also the closest Liz to our house, and the one we went to most often. I remember two things in particular about it. First, they had a pot-plant by the register which was connected to a lamp. Through some sort of capacitance effect, if you touched the leaves of the plant, the lamp would turn on, cycle through dim, normal and bright and then off again. Second, once when we were eating there, the waitress subtracted the cost of our drinks from the bill rather than adding it. I've had days like that..

The building sat empty for a bit after Liz left (to go down to a new location [and building!] near Sandhill) and then the current tenant moved in. From the amount of time it was taking, and the car I often saw parked there, my impression was that the new owner was doing most of the work him(?)-self. I think too, that when it first opened, the "Korean" rubric had not been added. I haven't eaten there, but it seems to draw a good lunch crowd. I doubt there's peas-over-rice though.

UPDATE 17 June 2025: Updating tags and adding map icon.

I noticed this defunct building / strip mall on Sunset Boulevard recently when I stopped to take some pictures of the old Quincy's building next door.

Of the three businesses that google suggests were here, I can only sort of recall hearing about or perhaps seeing Pizza House. At one point back in the 90s, I went on a quest for Columbia's best pizza and hit a large number of pizza restaurants, but never this one. At this remove I'm not sure why. It could be the distance, but during that time, I did try the nearby Grecian Gardens for pizza, so I doubt that was it. It could be that it was one of those places where you order at the counter rather than at your table -- I try to avoid those. Or perhaps it looked decrepit even back then.

The other two businesses I'm fairly sure I never heard of. Debbie's Plants seems like a fairly self-explanatory name, but not one that would attract me, and the medical facility seems to have either been eldercare or mental health care or perhaps both.

I see that the whole complex is for sale. It looks like it would take fairly extensive work to make it look decent again -- it wouldn't surprise me if whoever buys it just knocks everything down.

UPDATE 11 April 2010: Added 1977 Bellsouth yellow page ad.

UPDATE 18 October 2012 -- As I speculated above, the whole place was knocked down some time ago. I have a more extensive set of pictures (though taken on a much less sunny day) somewhere, but for now these from 19 February 2011 tell the story:

UPDATE 13 February 2017 -- This strip is now Salsaritas and Starbucks:

The bakery which was the first tenant I can recall in the Triangle Rent-a-Car building must have set some sort of record for opened and closed. I barely had time to notice that it was there, and then it wasn't. I think the concept was sort of Atlanta / Panera but with a drive-through. From this Richland County delinquent tax spreadsheet for 2004, which lists the business entity as Buns Spring Valley LLC, I'm guessing that the place was probably called Buns, though I can specifically remember that.

I don't know why they didn't make it, but my own theory, based on seeing the place but yet not stopping, is that the location was too hard to get too to make an attractive drive-through combined with the fact that the strip mall it's in is not really a "destination", and the fact of it's having a drive-through kind of devalued it if you were in the mood for a Panera type sit-down experience.

UPDATE 5 May 2009: Consensus in the comments is that this place was also a Schlotzsky's deli at one time, so I have added that to the post title.

UPDATE 7 Sep 2010: Got the correct name for "Buns" and updated the post title with Panino Bakery and Cafe. Also added Hardee's -- see the comments!

UPDATE 19 June 2021: Adding tags and map icon.

I don't believe I ever shopped this store, but I think it was on Rosewood for most of my life. The building is one of the older style Pigs, much like that of the Covenant Road Pig and the Marshall Street Pig, though in this case the follow-on store has not retained the Pig's marquee letters the way Kimbrell's has.

The current tenant is Dollar Tree an "everything for a dollar store. It appears from this real estate listing that the building itself is again for sale, though Dollar Tree has a six-year lease. I notice that they are building a lot of residences on the other side of Rosewood (and a bit down the hill) -- too bad the PIg didn't hold out another few years, as that would be a new customer base (though the store is small for the current Piggly WIggly concept).

UPDATE 27 April 2009: I have updated the closing date in the post title from "2000s" to the "July 2002" date supplied by Dave in the comments.

it seems to me that that Leesburg Road used to be more fashionable than it is now. Perhaps since I-77 came through, it's a bit harder to get to, and to describe how to get to. Or it could just be my imagination, since we didn't go there much even back in the day.

In fact, I have only a very vague memory of having heard about Dick's Flamingo Club at all. If I hadn't seen the ad while I was xeroxing the "restaurants" section from the 1970 phonebook, I'm sure I wouldn't ever have thought of it again. I do notice that it was open until 11pm on weeknights, and it seems to me that more restaurants were open late in 1970 than are today. Nowdays, if you can't get there before 10, or even 9 in a lot of cases, you are pretty well hosed.

The property is currently occupied by Parklane Seafood House whose sign proclaims that they are celebrating their 30th anniversary, having started in 1978. Of course, I think they actually were on Parklane then, so I'm not sure the 1978 date was the actual closure year for Dick's.

UPDATE 5 October 2021: Adding map icon.

In my mind, Hardee's has been going down hill since they got rid of Gilbert Giddyup & Speedy McGreedy, not to mention "charco" grilling. For years though, the real reason to stop at a Hardee's when you got off the Interstate rather than McDonalds or Burger King, was for the ice.

There are a number of different types of commercial ice makers for restaurants. Some make lenticular spherical sections, others make partially hollow cubes, and some make "chewy" ice. Honestly, I don't know why a restaurant would want anything but the last kind, but some do and did. Hardee's though could be counted on for the chewy ice for years and then in a fit of madness, they gave it up. Next they started emphasing chicken such that I couldn't even go into the stores any more because of the chicken smell. Finally they were bought out by Carl's Junior wandered aimlessly for years but of late seem to have grabbed onto a workable concept with the "thickburger" line (though I have yet to sample one).

Anyway, that's all besides the point to this pair of local playground changes sent in by commenter Melanie. The "before" shots come from her, and I took the "after" ones last weekend:

The tall metal man was the playground at the Hardees beside Dutch Square before they tore it down. I think this picture was taken 1995 give or take a year.

and:

Hardees ditched another of their coolest playgrounds sometime in the new millenia. Here is a pic taken in 1995-6 of the Hardees playground from Garners Ferry where I77 goes over. They had this playground at least since I was born because I remember it always being there.

The metal man is indeed way cool. I can only speculate that either the insurance became too burdensome, or playgrounds don't really fit in with the Carl's Junior conception of Hardee's.

UPDATE 21 April 2009: Added "Dutch Square" to the post title.

UPDATE 18 December 2012: Changed the location for the "Garners Ferry" Hardees from 7942 Garners Ferry Road to 120 Veterans Road. (The Hardee's in question is not actually on Garners Ferry, but a side-street, and the Garners Ferry Address is another Hardee's entirely).

UPDATE 10 April 2019 -- This location has now closed, the closing is here. Also updated tags and added map icon.

Dreamland was one of the many small motels that lined Highway 1 ("The Camden Highway" it was called on that stretch) when it was a major inter-state (as opposed to "Interstate") artery. Since we lived in town and had no reason to stay in a Columbia motel, the place probably would have gone without me being fully aware it was there except that in the 70s we had swimming lessons there.

I'm not sure how it works today, except that it's different, but in the 70s, it seemed that most swimming lessons were sponsored, or perhaps just certified, by The Red Cross. They had a standardized curriculum with different proficency levels. The ones I recall were: Beginner, Advanced Beginer and Intermediate. I suppose there may have been an Advanced somewhere, but I never got that far. In fact, I think I had Advanced Beginner about three times. To a certain extent this was just to get us out of the house during the summer and I don't think my mother was overly concerned about the "level" we were taking as long as they covered the "don't drown" part.

As you can see by the Yellow Pages ad, by 1970, Dreamland found itself by the new I-20. I guess this had plusses, but the minuses were that the Interstates were homogenizing the country to the extent that people expected a national brand motel at an "I" exit, and that the long-haul traffic on US-1 was drying up. That's my speculation at any rate. Whatever the reason, they decided to make a little money by holding swimming lessons in the motel pool. My mother liked this as she could in theory drop us off there and then go to K-Mart or the grocery store for an hour or so before coming back for us. I don't remember much abou the lessons, I suspect it was another Advanced Beginner session, and we did in fact get through the "don't drown" part.

A few years after that, Dreamland was torn down to make way for the Spring Valley Theater which was in turn torn down to make way for Lowes (which is still there). The picture above is of the Lowe's parking lot more or less where I think the theater and motel were.

UPDATE 13 October 2009: Added scanned postcard and the text from the back.

Site of the 5437 Forest Drive DQ:

The old 1366 Rosewood, DQ building:

The old 135 Sunset Boulevard store (now an Eggroll Station):

This fish market at 3939 Beltline Boulevard isn't on the phonebook list above, but was clearly a Dairy Queen at one time:

Actually the ad lists a lot more Dairy Queens in town than I was aware of back in the day. The one I remember was the one on Forest Drive at Percival Road, about where the oil-change place is now. I'm not even sure we ever stopped there -- after Bell's closed, we were more of a McDonald's family as far as fast-food burgers went back then.

The main reason I remember this Dairy Queen was because of the national ad campaign featuring Hank Ketchum's Dennis The Menace. Dennis was one of the comics I always read in The State, so it really caught my attention when he and his pal "Joey" started doing radio spots for Dairy Queen. Most of them were not that memorable, but there was one where Dennis & Joey were discussing all the "brazier" treats that it was possible to get at Dairy Queen in those days, and Joey delivered the line

Yeah, Dennis, like a super-brazier chilli-dog!

so memorably that it became sort of a catch-phrase with my friends. Almost any conversation could be punctuated by dropping Yeah Dennis, like a super-brazier chilli-dog! into a lull.

I'm not sure what happened to the Forest Drive Dairy Queen. I have it in my mind that it may have burned down, but I know that happened to the very nearby Forest Drive Pizza Hut, so I may be confusing the two stores. At any rate, the whole brazier thing which was supposed to propel DQ into the top ranks of fast food joints didn't really work, Dennis The Menace or no, and the chain exists today under much reduced circumstances.

UPDATE 22 April 2009: Added pix of the Forest Drive site, and the Rosewood building.

UPDATE 13 May 2009: Added pix of the Sunset Boulevard building.

UPDATE 25 May 2009: Added pic of a Beltline location

UPDATE 12 June 2024: This post is a mess since it was still fairly early days for the blog, and I tried to shoehorn four different locations into one post for some reason. I should separate them out and put a map icon on each, but for right now, I am just going to update the tags a bit.

I noticed on the electronic sign you see when you're at the Harden Street light heading downtown on Gervais a month or so ago that Peter Glenn Ski & Sports was going out of business.

The only time in my life I've even almost gone skiing was in, I think, ninth grade when we had a class trip to a North Carolina slope but I got sick and had to give my place to a cousin. It's probably just as well as I'm sure I would have broken something. All that is to say that I never went into, or considered going into, Peter Glenn.

The window "murals" were nice though!

UPDATE 16 April 2009: Commenter Brian notes that this place used to be "Jeff Price Tennis & Ski". I have updated the post title to include that. He also notes that the last day of "Peter Glenn" was probably 8 March 2009, and I have made that update to the post title as well.

UPDATE 13 May 2010: Rearranged Post title to put "Jeff Price" first, and added the "& skate"

UPDATE 4 February 2016 -- As noted by commenter Joe Shlabotnik, this place has been torn down:

UPDATE 13 July 2017 -- The new building is up:

Kester's Bamboo House occupied the spot on Harden Street now held by China Garden and Jungle Jim's. The first (rather unflattering) image comes from the 1963 Southern Bell directory and the second from the 1970 one. I'm not sure when the place closed, but I suspect it was sometime in the 1970s. I'm pretty sure I recall hearing about it as a child, but don't recall seeing it after I began to drive myself. A posting to a genealogy website says that the original Mr. Kester passed in 1966, but I don't know if the business stayed in the family after that or was sold at that point.

I also don't know if 724 Harden was split into two businesses at that point, or if Kester's occupied the whole space by itself, though the 1970 Yellow Pages ad claims banquet seating for 100, which seems larger than the current China Garden capacity. At any rate, I'm pretty sure the current China Garden building was at least part of Kester's and does date back to that era, and is somewhat responsible for the closing of The Parthenon.

As I remember it, the story in The State was that when the interminable Five Points road work of a few years ago reached The China Garden a snag developed. As the work crews went to replace the infrastructure under the building's foundation, they found that the building had no foundation! The front wall was basically supported only by the sidewalk, so before they could go under the building to work, they had to shore everything up and this took a lot longer than they expected -- and all the while they were there, access to The Parthenon was very difficult.

UPDATE 24 June 2019: Add tags and map icon.