Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Phar-Mor was a discount drugstore, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was a mini-department store (think Walgreens, but larger) that filled perscriptions. This store on Harbison, next to the Barnes & Noble, is the only one I'm aware of in Columbia (I also know of one that was in Aiken at Aiken Mall). At one time, the Phar-Mor chain appeared to be a category beater, growing faster and bringing in more money than any of its competitors. Unfortunately in the aftermath it emerged that the whole thing was a giant crooked pyramid scheme with the founder cooking the books right and left. The chain went into bankruptcy, and the founder went to jail. I believe the chain struggled on a while after this store closed, but finally went totally under in 2002.

Ross Dress For Less has occupied the spot since Phar-Mor closed, and seems to be doing well. The strip mall seems to have regular turnover of smaller storefronts, but luckily has been able to hold on to (or in this case replace) the anchors.

UPDATE 26 Sep 2010: I've added the full address to the post title. However, while the current address appears to be 287 Harbison Boulevard, my older sources give the address as 272 Harbison Boulevard, so apparently there has been some re-numbering within that plaza.

UPDATE 20 March 2011: Updated the closing date based commenter Andrew's research, also added the store number "0229".

The thing about Tio's is that it is open late. However, that's not enough in my opinion. I went there a few years ago when it was after 10pm and not a weekend night, so my choices for Mexican were severely limited. I was a bit encouraged by the place featuring dozens of bottles of different kinds of hot sauce, but unfortunately, they didn't seem to actually use any of them in preparing the food. When I was on campus recently, I picked up a copy of the student newspaper, The Daily Gamecock which had a less than positive review.

Anyway, I mention Tios because it has moved from Main Street at the base of the Capitol to Sumter.

UPDATE 21 December 2023: Adding map icon, updating tags.

I noticed the other day that there was a blanked out hotel sign visible from Two Notch at the I-20 Westbound on-ramp, so I decided to turn at the Union 76 station and take a look.

I'm not sure it comes across in the picture, but you can barely read "Travelodge Suites" on the blanked-out sign in person, and a quick google confirms the location. The place is still listed in a lot of "book your hotel online" sites, so I'm guessing the end didn't come too long ago.

The architecture is a bit unusual. The hotel seems to be divided into two buildings, an admin building and the main structure, and both have a "modern" looking design -- not your typical boxy hotel buildings.

I'm not sure what happened to this place, but the notes on the door of the admin building would indicate that it wasn't voluntary. The place is a little hard to get into and out of, what with the somewhat odd light placement on Two Notch and the traffic backing up at the lights. Perhaps that played a role, or perhaps it was something else entirely.

UPDATE 17 September 2009: This place has been in the news lately. It has been taken on by Benedict College as dorm space for students, and in fact the kids have moved in, but now the county says it is unsafe and they will have to move out. Obviously you can't take chances with kids' safety, but there seems to be some miscommunication between the college and the fire marshall on exactly what needs to happen. Stories here, here and here.

UPDATE 13 October 2009: Added scan of Quality Inn postcard and entered the text on the reverse. Also added "Quality Inn" to the post title.

UPDATE 2 July 2010: It turns out I was wrong about the second building, the one with the notes on the doors, being part of the Quality Inn / Travelodge property. It was actually the headquarters for the infamous 3 Hebrew Boys financial scam company, and I have made a separate post about it.

UPDATE 28 July 2010: Well acccording to The State Richland denies Benedict zoning for hotel-turned-dorm, so I guess Benedict now has a huge, useless property on its hands.

UPDATE 29 September 2021: Updating tags and adding map icon.

In a comment on a previous post commenter "Jonathan" identified this building on Two Notch Road across from Columbia Mall as Continental Sound. If not for that, I probably would just think of it as "that radio building".

The place is now some sort of loan operation called Cash -n- Dash and has been remodeled, so you can't tell it now, but at one time the whole front of this building was designed to look like a dashboard radio/cassette player. What is now the left star was then the volume knob, while the right star was the tuning knob. I believe the front windows did not have the opaque blue window then so they looked like a cassete insertion slot. I also believe that there was a digital tuning display above the windows. (Though they were not common in cars until later). In the beginning, it was set to "104.7" which was WNOK, which was a rock station at the time. Later, for whatever reason (advertising bucks, new manager whatever) the tuning of the building was changed to another station. My memory says it was WCOS, which was a country station, but I could be wrong.

At one time Continental Sound commercials were ubiquitous on Columbia television, so I really should remember exactly what they did. In fact I have only a vague idea that they sold and installed car stereos because the rest of the commercial was what drew my (and everybody's) attention. Their commercials were always tagged by a girl delivering the catch phrase Sounds Real Good! in a really appealing manner. I say "catch phrase", but I believe it was just meant to be a one-time commercial closing line, until she sold it so well that they went on to feature it in every commercial they did. Again, my memory may be playing me false as it often does, but I believe they actually used the same footage all the time, so perhaps the girl was never able to give the line the same oomph in later readings. Eventually, they did change it -- sort of. The original "sounds real good" girl was average looking -- perfectly OK, but not actress/model quality in the looks department. The final "sounds real good" commercials used a sexier girl who lip synched to the original girl's line.

I don't know what happened to Continental Sound. I think they folded or moved in the 1990s. Google suggests that after that the building was home to Big Apple Music which, I think, left the building's radio motif alone. I can understand why Cash -n- Dash wanted to change it -- it's certainly not what you would expect for that type of operation and would tend to confuse casual traffic, but it's still a shame to lose such a unique building. Though I suppose in a few years parents would have had to explain what a "cassette" was anyway..

UPDATE 14 September 2021: Adding map icon and updating tags.

Sticky Fingers was yet another victim of the declining fortunes of the Dentsville area. I believe that they were the second tenant in this building, which was built for O'Charleys before that operation followed The Olive Garden, Lizard's Thicket, Circuit City, Target, Office Depot, JC Penny and Kroger Sav-On to the new developments further out on Two Notch or at Sandhill. The closing sign says they lasted five years, though I woudn't have guessed that long.

I can't comment on their ribs as I'm not a rib guy. I believe I ate there only twice and had a burger both times. It was fine, though not spectacular. I'm a little curious about what's going on with the building. It appears to have been kept in pretty good shape, and to have not been cleaned out (notice the gum machines still in there). Furthermore, I didn't see a for-sale or for-lease sign anywhere. I wonder if Sticky Fingers is holding on to it for some reason.

UPDATE 16 May 2010 -- It's now a "brazillian-style" restaurant, Caprioska:

Their web site is here

UPDATE 19 August 2022: Adding map icon and updating tags.

I've written about D's before. Recently in the comments people mentioned that several other D's had now closed. I was over in the Harbison area, so I decided to check that one out, but found that I actually didn't know where it was, and had been thinking of Wild Wing (which is still open). After that, I decided to check on this location, which is on Clemson Road at Sparkleberry in a strip mall which has seen a number of restaurants flounder.

What I found was a little odd in that while there was a floor sign offering a "franchaise opportunity" (when "opportunity" is used in this way, I always decode it as in the immortal phrase from Pogo: We are confonted with insurmountable opportunities!) for this restaurant, the one in "Bythewood" and the one in Harbison, all the lights were still on, and the place looked as though it had been straightened up for business, not closing. Nonetheless it wasn't open. Still, it looked so not closed that I hesitated to post on it. Then when I was on my way to Brixx the other night I stopped by again and saw a very definite sign saying that the place would be reopened on 16 October, though it also used the dreaded "renovations" word which often indicates more of a fond wish to re-open someday than anything else (especially as no renovation work was visible through the windows). So, we will see tomorrow!

UPDATE 17 Oct 2008:

Well, they did not reopen on 16 October..

UPDATE 6 May 2009: They are definitely gone for good now, so I have taken the "(temporary?)" tag off the post title. I have also updated the post title with the full street address of the store, and added the word "Northeast" to the store name.

UPDATE 10 Jan 2010: A new operation "7 Grill & Bar" is moving into the old "D's" slot:

UPDATE 28 April 2010 -- The D's replacement, 7 Grill is now open:

UPDATE 11 December 2012: Interesting tip from commenter Frank to the effect that D's will be reopening here soon. These pictures pretty much confirm it. The 7 Grill marquee is still up, but the interior has been filled with D's stuff. In fact, that cigar store Indian is almost certainly the one from D's on Beltline so it would appear that the Beltline store is moving here!

UPDATE 23 October 2015 -- OK, this is getting a little hard to follow, but this location (D's Northeast) closed in 2008, then the building became 7 Grill which closed, then the D's from Beltline (which was a seperate operation) moved here, and now it has closed. As you can see by the door note, this latest closure came sometime before 15 September 2015:

UPDATE 7 December 2016 -- Now a J Peters:

My memory is a bit unclear, but OK Carbs was in one of these storefronts (all different "suites" at 252 Harbison). This is the (generally) horseshoe-shaped strip mall that has Barnes & Noble and The Olive Garden. With the sudden rise to fame of the Atkins Diet and its emphasis on counting carbohydrates instead of fats, it was inevitable that someone was going to figure out (or attempt to figure out) a way to make money off the latest craze. I'm sure there were others in town, but OK Carbs was the one that caught my eye because I hit the Harbison Barnes & Noble fairly often (since, unlike the Richland Mall one, it actually is open during the hours you would expect a Barnes & Noble to be open..). I didn't follow the Atkins diet (my personal belief is that the best diet is eat less & exercise more, not that I follow that one either!), but I always respect someone trying to make a buck off of a trend. In the event, I don't know if they pulled out in time to finish ahead or if they rode it into the ground, but whichever case, OK Carbs, like Dr. Atkins, is no longer with us.

By the time Sears moved from Harden Street to Columbia Mall, it was long past the catalog glory days of being the company you could by anything from, but it hadn't yet been so bloodied in the retail wars that it would reject odd ideas out of hand.

This concrete slab in the Columbia Mall parking lot by the Charleston Crab House (and still actually owned by Sears to judge from the tow-away signs) was one of them. Over this slab was a canopy, and under the canopy was an island with a number of Sears-branded gas pumps. I don't remember a whole lot about the place as we only filled up one of two times there. I'm pretty sure it was self-serve, but since there was no such thing as electronic credit card reading pumps at the time, there certainly would have been a cashiers shed with an attendant. You could pay with cash, or, of-course, with your Sears Card.

My memory is that the place was an experiment that didn't last too long. I don't know exactly what happened, but I can hazard some guesses. First, the location was not convenient unless you were already at the mall. Getting in and out of the mall parking lot was (and is) much more time consuming than stoping at a corner station. Second, in the 70s people actually had some brand loyalty to different gas chains, and felt that name-brand gas was a better product than generic. Now we tend to think it's like sugar, and there's no problem buying Domino's if Dixie Crystals is more expensive. Third, at some point in the 70s (I believe) there was a major scandal about Sears's auto repair operation ripping people off (that's why about all they will do nowadays is change tires or batteries). The opprobrium from that may have tainted their gas business in people's minds. Fourth, it is simply the fact that selling gas was not in the core retail market Sears was (is..) trying to serve. As their fortunes declined, they may have decided that selling gas was a distraction and brand-dillution. (Though I have seen Wal-Mart trying the concept recently..).

At any rate, the place closed after not too many years. The canopy stood for several years after that, but was itself finally torn down. I don't remember the tanks being torn out, and there are still some access points, so perhaps they are still there (though that seems like an enviromental cleanup bill waiting to happen if it really is the case).

UPDATE 20 February 2020: Add tags, address, map icon.

I used to see this place whenever I was driving down I-26 to Charleston and wonder what it would be like. My guess was that it was a no-nonsense meat & 3 for hungry travellers, but I'll never know for sure now. If I had to speculate, I'd say it wasn't far enough out of town anymore and that traffic was now stopping at national chains before getting this far. (It's just a few miles up I-26 to Harbison or up I-77 to Two Notch). From all the work being done inside though, it looks like something wil set up in the building.

UPDATE 9 June 2009: Well, something did set up there -- Maggie Mae's! Looks like they're open again.

UPDATE 6 Nov 2010 -- Closed again:

UPDATE 11 November 2011: Found an extra interior picture and added it above.

UPDATE 24 January 2024: Adding tags and map icon, and putting the full street address in the post title.

I already posted about the closing of the Two Notch Goody's, and the problems the whole chain was and is having, but I thought it was interesting that the building for the Bower Parkway Goody's, which apparently closed at the same time, has already been re-purposed. Granted these "giant book sale" things usually only last for a couple of weeks or months (though one at the old Waccamaw Pottery mall lasted for a few years), but it's something and it starts today, so you if you head out now, you can get 80% off some out of date computer manuals, and cookbooks by people you never heard of.

UPDATE 18 July 2009: Not its a "liquidation sale" for the next month or so. The sort of $5 entrance fee affair you used to see at Jamil Temple sometimes:

UPDATE 25 May 2010: Change post title to reflect full official name of the store and full street address.

UPDATE 22 Sep 2010 -- Now it's a Halloween store:

UPDATE 24 September 2011 -- It's to be a Stein Mart:

UPDATE 31 October 2011 -- Looks like Stein Mart is open:

UPDATE 10 May 2017 -- Actually I have been confusing 1120 & 1130 Bower Parkway. Goody's, the Haloween popup store and the Giant Book Sale store were all in 1130, most recently occupied by H H Gregg. 1120 where Stein Mart was is a different storefront.