Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

OK, I've looked over each post I made during 2009, and these are the top 20 posts that either

a) I liked

b) Seemed significant to the area

c) Seemed to get a lot of feedback

The rule is that the post had to have been made this year, the subject of the post may have been gone for years or decades. These are in no particular order other than roughly the order the posts were made in.

1) Birds On A Wire

2) Sounds Familiar, Rosewood

3) Circuit City, Two Notch & Harbison

4) Guignard Bricks

5) Southern Gentleman's Strip Club

6) The Bounty, Sumter Highway

7) Waldenbooks, Dutch Square

8) The Market Restaurant

9) Luigi's Italian Kitchen

10) The Original Italian Pie, Forest Drive

11) The Village Bistro

12) Kmart, Dutch Square

13) The Myrtle Beach Pavilion

14) Hiller Hardware, Harden Street

15) Hurricane Hugo

16) Richland Mall Theater

17) Wade Hampton Hotel

18) Tasty Bake Shop

19) Bush River Mall

20) Le Petit Chateau

Happy New Year!

Video

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Video

The soggy aftermath at Forest Lake Shopping Center on the 26th:

Well, I was not actually going to make another post until the New Year, but I don't think I can let the Great Christmas Flood of 2009 pass without notice. As we headed out over the river and through the woods, we found out that in fact the river was over the woods this year.

As we tried to get to Trenholm Road, we found that creek (name unknown) was flooding Trenholm access from both Academy Way (first picture) and Sylvan Drive and that Eightmile Branch was flooding Gamewell Drive. Fortunately the WIllingham Drive bridge was still above water. At Forest Lake Shopping Center (Trenholm Road at Forest Drive) the Garden Center and Web Rawls Gallery in the old bank were flooded as was the whole of Forest Lake Park

In fact, water was coming over the Forest Lake Park embankment into Gills Creek at such great speed and volume that it made a line of waterfalls. As we watched, we saw several bits of flotsam & jetsam such as trash cans go over the falls. The park whirly-gig was entirely under water. We drove over to Zoe's parking lot, and I got some Quicktime video of the cataracts. There's not a lot of pictures because a) it was still raining cats and dogs & b) we were on our way out of town. By the time we got back mid-morning the 26th all the flood waters were gone though the Web Rawls and Garden Center folks were still working at recovery.

I think that makes two "100 year" floods here in the last 15 years..

UPDATE 28 December 2009: D'Oh! Video links were wrong, fixed now.

UPDATE 29 July 2010: Added the picture from 26 December.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Posting will be light to nonexistant for a bit.

Well, it seems that the second location of Mangia! Mangia! is now history. I believe I ate there only twice, once in West Columbia, and once, very recently, in the new Spears Creek location.

I don't recall much about the West Columbia visit, but I chose pizza at the Spears Creek venue, and found it pretty good. Not necessarily "drive almost to Elgin" good, but nice.

I have no idea what happened to the place, but I suspect the "drive to Elgin" factor did have something to do with it. In the first place, "out of sight, out of mind" -- I only visited recently because I kept forgetting that the place existed. Second, timing. It's clear that the area is going to experience the eastward drift of the metro area as the Two Notch Corridor and Sandhills already have, but the recession has probably pushed that back, and the density just wasn't there yet. Or I could be completely wrong, though it sounds like the new operation there, Shag Bistro is thinking along similar lines, in antipation of the dining business from the Verizon call center relocation..

Added bonus, interesting clouds and sunset driving back from Spears Creek.

(Hat Tip to commenter Stewart)

UPDATE 22 February 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon. Also adding suite number to the title.

I've never been great at video games, though I used to go to arcades pretty often. Galaga is my favorite, and the one I was/am best at, though that "best" was no great shakes on an absolute scale. I never did make the transiton from arcade games to computer/console/online games and so have never been in a store like Game Crazy. As far as I can tell from googling around, the chain has not declared bankruptcy or made the news for massive store closings, so I guess this closing can be chalked up to local conditions probably exacerbated by the recession in general. Now if they could only put some place you could get coffee and a snack in that little strip..

(Hat tip to commenter Jason)

UPDATE 28 Oct 2010 -- This place is nearly ready to re-open as a GameStop (In fact if they made the opening date promised on their sign, they are open now):

I like to eat lunch at the Schlotzsky's on the corner of Parklane and O'Neil Court sometimes, and the last time I was there, I noticed that several of the suites in the little corner strip it occupies were vacant. You would think that it's a visible high-traffic location, but I guess being near Columbia Mall isn't the draw it used to be.

If you click through to the large version of the picture, you can tell that there was originally some other writing between "G.G's" and "Flowers", but I can't make out what it would have been. I'm putting 2009 as the closing date here, but honestly I can't recall if I ever saw the place open or not. I guess florists don't really impinge much on my attention.

UPDATE 26 Feb 2011: Changed the title to give the full shop name "G.G's Artistry In Flowers" given in the comments, and in the main marquee for the Corner Shoppes of Parklane, which I somehow totally missed when I took the initial picture above. Here it is:

UPDATE 28 March 2011 -- It's now a We Buy Gold place:

I noticed this empty storefront in Cedar Terrace a while back while taking pictures for a closing on the adjacent Fred's. These sort of addresses are a bit of a problem to google because there isn't a standard representation. Is it "6420P Garners Ferry Road", "6420 Garners Ferry Road Suite P", "6420 Garners Ferry Road #P", or something else? Given that I have no personal memory at all as to what may have been here, I tried googling all of those.

It appears that the place was World Gym at one time, and then on 11 December 2007 there was a zoning hearing to zone the place for a bingo parlor. From the structure of the zoning minutes, that was expected to be approved, so I'll guess it did happen.

I also expect that the bingo operation followed the gym, because if you look at the back wall in these pictures, the last place in there had a smoking section and a concession stand, which would be pretty odd for a gym.

If you order by midnight Sunday, you can still get your 2010 Columbia Closings Wall Calendar by Christmas with permium shipping. Of course if you just need it by the New Year, you still have plenty of time with regular shipping.

I'm also pleased to say that I've gotten my copy of the 2010 Pawleys Island Wall Calendar too, and I think it turned out pretty well.

You're going to need a calendar anyway, why not one of these?

Here's another old-style Taco Bell that has moved to a new location (739 Knox Abbott Drive in this case) with drive-through capabilities and the new-style chain architecture. There is still an old-style one on Decker Boulevard (though I believe it already has a drive-through) but the ones on Devine Street and Broad River Road are gone and/or moved.

This is really too many pictures, but I like these buildings, and I like clouds. The last picture is of their new location, which is several blocks towards the river.

UPDATE 24 Sep 2010 -- As noted by commenter Jamie, the building has been re-painted, and there has been some work to convert it to a Wata Wing, but that seems to have stalled:

I've always been a little surprised that the Tempur-Pedic logo got approved and widely used. Of course there's nothing racy about someone just getting a good-night's sleep, but that someone is undeniably a lady, and one with a rather shapely derriere not overburdened with clothing. I see in fact that the Tempur-Pedic company itself now seems to have moved to a logo with less, um, cleavage.

For some reason or other, Two Notch Road seems to have dozens of mattress stores. It now has one less as this Beds Plus store at Two Notch & O'Neil Court is gone. In fact, as I drove by tonight I saw that the next tenant has already moved in, but it was dark and raining, so I didn't quite catch what it was.