Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I remember three events coming to The Coliseum with some regularity when I was growing up. They were the The World Famous Royal Lipizzaner Stallions, Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus and Holiday On Ice.

I think I saw the Stallions, though I can remember nothing about it, and I saw the circus at least twice. I'm pretty sure I saw Holiday On Ice only once, and am also pretty sure (through the 'Green Giant' connection) that this was the year I saw it.

Ice skating was (and is!) pretty exotic in Columbia. I think Rockbridge club has had the only rink in town for ages, and it's private (though I did get to go there once with scouts -- unfortunately I hadn't mastered even roller skating at that point, and ice skating was a total debacle). Also, there weren't sports channels where you could see it every day as there are now. Pretty much, you saw it if you watched the Olympics, and that was about it -- Unless you saw Holiday On Ice.

I can actually only remember one thing about the show though. One segment was called "The Age of Asparagus" which 12-year-old-I thought was just astoundingly clever, and featured skating vegetables. That's the part where "The Jolly Green Giant" made his appearance.

It appears from Wikipedia and Holiday On Ice's own web site that they have exited the North American market, and now tour in Europe, Asia & Latin America -- I guess for us, The Age of Asparagus has passed.

UPDATE 8 October 2025: Update tags, add map icon. Change post title to make "The Coliseum" "Carolina Coliseum" and add street address.

I don't particularly concern myself with "timeliness" here. For one thing, I'm just one guy with a car and a camera -- there's no way I could keep up with everything closing, even if I somehow knew about it. For another thing, I may care more about some place that closed 20 years ago than some other storefront that went under yesterday.

With that said, after commenter Tom mentioned it in Have Your Say and after I saw the story in The State that today was the last day in business for Jim Moore Cadillac, I thought I might as well drive by and get some pictures.

According to The State the dealership is a casualty of GM's ongoing death-spiral restructuring. The story is a bit vague about whether the store was making a go of it otherwise, saying only that sales had been "improving".

I really don't have any mental tags for this dealership at all. We were never a Cadillac family, and the only commercials I recall were for what I presume was a related business, "Moore Hudson Olds", which all had a distinctively overmodulated announcer pretending to be live from their lot. Still it's always sad to see a landmark like this close, and Main street definitely doesn't need another vacant lot.

UPDATE 30 Nov 2010 -- Here's some more pictures taken on a brighter day:

UPDATE 19 May 2025 -- Time has not been kind to this property, and nothing else has ever moved in:

Also adding map icon and updating tags, and here is the LoopNet info.

This space, to the right of Barnes & Noble on the lower level of Richland Mall was the mall's drugstore, Eckerd Drugs.

I'm trying to remember if the original Richland Mall had a drug store and I don't think it did. Eckerd's came in with the enclosed Richland Fashion Mall stage, and may have ended there. I don't think it made it to the Midtown at Forest Acres stage, but I'm not sure exactly when that started, and I refuse to call the mall that anyway.

It certainly did not make it as late as the Rite-Aid buyout of Eckerd's. I'm not sure exactly when it closed, but I think it was the early 2000s. By that time, Eckerd's had already seen the writing on the wall which required corner stores, and had moved the Trenholm Plaza store to the current corner-equivalent location that RIte AId on Forest Drive now occupies. The Richland Mall store had no drive-through, and could never have one, and while the parking was as close to strip-mall parking as Richland Mall gets, it still wasn't as good as a real strip-mall.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

These are the kind of businesses I notice off and on over the years, and if I think about them at all, wonder how they are making a living, until one day I notice that they are not anymore. These adjoining lots are on Percival Road, just east of Decker Boulevard.

The story, at least for the Upholstery shop seems to be a sad one, of the parents passing away, and the children not being able to carry on the business. I'm not clear on what the story of the little drive-in was as it was not detailed in the County Zoning hearing minutes which are online here. Apparently nobody even knew the name of the place.

The hearing seems to have focused on keeping the property commercial. The businesses had been operating on residential property as grandfathered operations, and when the business licenses lapsed, the ability to locate a business there did also. In this case it seems to me pretty much a no-brainer, and apparently it was approved. Both properties are now for sale, and time will tell what locates there.

Also, an interesting tid-bit came up in google when I was searching for the street addresses and "Duanne Warr", who was associated with the action somehow. As it turns out, in the minutes, he spoke for the proposed buyer of the property apparently as a realtor, but it appears he was once a Columbia heavy metal rocker cutting

One of the most insane records ever made!

UPDATE 7 June 2014 -- Commenter Sidney points out that the drive-in building has been razed, and so it has:

UPDATE 10 October 2016 -- The old drive-in lot is now about to be Tacos Nayarit Mexican Grill:

Well, it must be past midnight because Gold's Gym has turned into a pumpkin. (Hey, that's the best I could come up with..)

This is the plaza on Harbison which is just across from the Barnes & Noble / Olive Garden one, and which is anchored by Books-A-Million. I've always wondered a bit about that -- if Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble were exactly equidistant from you, who would choose BAM?

In recent years, it seems these Halloween stores have started to spring up in empty storefronts all over each fall. I believe that last year, there was one on US-1 near I-26, one on Two Notch near the old Circuit City and one at Sandhill next to H Gregg. More power to them if they can make a business of it, and create some jobs -- it still just seems kind of weird to me to make that big a deal of Halloween. (Though as I mentioned last year, being on an escalator under a bevy of 'Naughty Nurses' is certainly inspiring).

UPDATE 14 December 2016: As mentioned in Have Your Say, a new gym, Crunch Fitness is opening (or may be open by this time) in this former Gold's Gym space in Harbison Center next to 2nd & Charles, the old Books-A-Million location.

The CBRE listing for the shopping center gives a detailed occupancy plan. I would not have guessed that many storefronts were vacant.

UPDATE 3 February 2026: Add map icon.

I believe the only Stein Mart I've ever been in is the Inlet Square store in Murrells Inlet where a desperate mall offered them the main west-side entrance corridor as store space. I can't recall much other than it was a clothes store that probably wouldn't be on my list when I make a reluctant clothes shopping expedition.

This store is at the corner of Two Notch & Polo Roads, and had pretty much totally escaped my notice until now. Polo Road has certainly developed massively since I was in high school, and there was, in fact, a polo field out there (which one of my classmates managed to set on fire with a model rocket), and development on Two Notch has definitely moved away from Dentsville and into this area, but with the current economy there are still plenty of vacant storefronts in the area, and soon there will be one more.

UPDATE 18 May 2010 -- It's now Roundabouts Consignments:

UPDATE 17 August 2020: Update tags, add map icon.

This is another casualty of the Ritz Camera chain's downsizing. Previously I wrote about the store on Two Notch Road which closed earlier this summer, and was hoping the other stores were safe. Unfortunately the trend seems to be continuing with this, the Harbison area store, closing while I was on vacation in July.

My observations of the Beltline store makes it seem to me that Ritz has almost totally ditched film photography for digital. I found that the last time I was in there and needed a roll of 35mm, they had a smaller selection than either Wal-Mart or Walgreen's. I'm sure this is a deliberate stragegy, and obviously digital is where the market is and where it will be. On the other hand, when you go to an actual "camera" store, you expect some more obscure items than you can find at the corner drugstore, so I'm not sure the strategy isn't a mixed blessing during this final film/digital period of transition.

UPDATE 30 August 2017 -- Still vacant 8 years later:

Personally, I don't want "Drama in Dining". That's when one of the couple at the table next to yours becomes aware that this is the "break up date". Drama is not pretty! I think I would also prefer my date not look like she comes from one of those societies where the women stretch their necks to prodigious lengths (not that there's anything wrong with that..).

I see that today the Fountain Bleau Club building houses The Fountain of Youth daycare center. Since the "fountain of youth" is normally something you think of in connection with old people, I suspect the name is a hat-tip to the former occupant. I'm afraid that I was shooting against the sun, so the pictures are not very good at all. I also note that in one of the pictures you can see a boarded up building to the right of the Fountain of Youth which appears to have been an old motel -- perhaps I'll run across its name someday.

(Ad is from the 1970 Southern Bell Greater Columbia phonebook).

UPDATE 17 March 2021 -- Commenter Jim Akins sends in this flyer for his band's performance at the Fountain Bleu back in the day. The 70s, gotta love 'em!

I'll change the post title if someone can reliably identify this place, but for now, all I can say is that it was an 70s or 80s looking fast food drive-through operation of some sort. The place is now 1st Choice Auto Center, and is almost on the corner of Two Notch and Beltline, in between the old Food Lion and the recently torn down McDonald's. We used to eat at the Burger King across the street fairly often, so I know I must have seen this while it was in operaiton, but I have no memory of it now.

UPDATE 23 Aug 2009: OK, looks like this was McDonald's before they moved to the corner of Two Notch and Beltline, so I'll change the post title from "Fast Food Restaurant" to "McDonald's".

Well, recent weeks have not been good to pizza operations on Forest Drive!

I liked The Original Italian Pie but found it rather frustrating in a couple of respects.

Why did I like it? Well, they had a quite good pizza, with ingredients like "kalamata olives" which, while getting more common, still are hard to find. The crust was not too thick but neither was it too thin and was chewy without being mushy. They also had bottles of olive oil on the tables to drizzle over the pizza, and the staff was friendly. In fact at the time I was going fairly often, they got to know me by sight, and would just bring out a pitcher of unsweet tea for me so I could read before and after my pizza without them having to keep making refill passes.

Why was it frustrating? The main thing was the hours. For various reasons, I am often uable to make supper before 9:30 at the earliest. That was OK initially, since while they closed at 9:00 during the week, Thur-Sat, they were open until 10:30 and I could drop by then.

After a few months however, they went into the deadly Well, we weren't too busy, so we closed the kitchen early cycle. This is a prime violation of rule #1!, and really ticks me off. I got caught in it a few times, then one night I thought I was safe as I was able to make it at 9:15, a full hour and 15 min before the posted closing and they still sprang it on me. I confess I got as argumentative as I ever do in a restaurant (which isn't much, but..). Luckily, I had the support of a feisty woman who had come in just behind me and we did get served. After that, they changed the hours posted on their door, leaving just a dash for the closing time if I recall correctly (which is, of course Sign #1), and I was not able to eat there at night anymore.

In fact I rarely got to eat there at all, since I don't usually have pizza for lunch during the week if I'm going to have to be awake and thinking during the afternoon, but I was able to go for Saturday or Sunday lunch from time to time. The closing of the Italian Pie at Sandhill was not a good sign, but didn't seem to have much effect on the Forest Drive store. However, the last time I was there, in early July, I believe, I did notice that Sign #6 had come into play: The olive oil bottles on each table were gone.

I don't know what happened in the end. As you can see from the pictures, the place is going to re-open as The Pizza Joint, so perhaps the owners just switched franchaises. That doesn't seem too likely to me however as TPJ is a "late night" chain, which was definitely not the strategy of The Italian Pie.

I encountered The Pizza Joint when I was working in Augusta. They have a location on Broad Street, and one night when it was too late to hit The Mellow Mushroom, I decided to check it out. Frankly, I wasn't too impressed since it's a New York style operation and NY is not my favorite pizza. The smallest pie was also 14-inches, which means that a single guy has to order by the slice, which I really don't like. (Also, that part of Broad Street was a good place to get panhandled).

I see that since I moved back here from Aiken, they have opened a branch there. I guess they are gradually moving East from Augusta. Perhaps if it works out here, they will hit Florence and Myrtle Beach..

They appear to be building a dining patio -- if they are able to get that done and open as the weather starts to cool down a bit, it should be very nice.

UPDATE 23 Aug 2009: Changed the post title to add Hardee's after being reminded in the comments that a Hardee's was on this lot (in a different building) before the Italian Pie.

UPDATE 19 June 2021: Adding tags and map icon. I should also now note that this building is currently The Pizza Joint and has been for quite a while.