Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, it's that time of year again! I've lined up my house-sitters and got my car packed. I'll be in and out of town over the next month or so and don't expect to make any relevant posts during that time (though I may weigh in with a few random words and pictures). I will be logging in every day or so to trim the spam comments and perhaps respond to the other ones.

Feel free to use this post as an "open thread" to discuss any ongoing closings or news (of course you can use Have Your Say too).

I also hope to have at least a few days of downtime during which I can upgrade the WordPress blogging software I'm using to the current version. That will let me run a better spam filter as well as some other features I've wanted to add for a while.

Fun is in!

I don't really know anything about Cayce School. I'm guessing that given the name, it was the school in Cayce at one time. The (Guignard?) brick architecture could easily go back to the 1940s I suppose. The pictures don't really make it clear, but as this aerial view from google maps shows, the school is really just one building with several different wings:

View Larger Map

Of course it's a building that takes up a block of its own, being bounded by 3rd Avenue, Lexington Avenue (on which it fronts), Poplar Street and 8th Street.

At some point it appears that it stopped being a "school" as such and was taken over by Lexington District Two as a "Learning Center". (I have to say that the picture with the sign indicating such would make a good funny email to forward around Mississippi education circles..).

The building has obviously been out of use for a good while, and I think only the fact that it is in the middle of a residential area has kept it from being vandalized and tagged to a fare-thee-well. Certainly it is decrepit, which can be seen in the google view (which can be zoomed) as well as my pictures. Signs around the school indicate that the lot is to become luxury townhomes in a gated community, so I suppose the building will be demolished at some point, though with the current real-estate market, I doubt the developers will be in a big hurry.

(Hat tip to commenter tonkatoy)

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Commenter MB points out that this maternity consignment shop in the "Office Suites" strip at 1055 Sunset Boulevard (across from the Brookland Baptist Church,site of the former Sub Cabin) has closed though their web site is still up for now.

(Hat tip to commenter MB, obviously)

Well, I admit I'm drawing a blank here. This building is in the 1200 block of D Avenue in Triangle City (just a bit up and across from the old Goodyear location. Whatever it was, it is, as you can see now, pretty thoroughly gutted.

When I took these pictures, I thought it would be easy to identify when I got home. In the event though, there appears not to be a street number on the building, and my fallback of finding the Grubb & Ellis listing for it, which I thought would be easy given their big sign, fails as well. Google Streetview shows two business storefronts in it, but won't zoom close enough to read the marquees and won't give the right street number. Anyone know? I'll update below and in the post title when I get more information..

UPDATE 20 July 2011:

OK! With help from the comments this building is identified as Fogle's Food City and Furniture Farm. The actuall address of the building is 1212 D Avenue, which is a higher number than I had thought. This LoopNet listing also makes clear that the building is much larger than I had thought with what must have been the main parking lot facing 12th Street. I will have to go back and take pictures of the 12th Street and C Avenue sides of the building.

The Secretary of State's office says that Fogle's Food City, Inc. was incorporated on 2 January 1970 and dissolved on 21 June 1996. Of course it's possible that the actual grocery started before that as a sole proprietorship or some other form of organization. It's also possible that it closed before the corporation was actually dissolved. At any rate, Furniture Farm ("Where Prices Are Born.. Not Raised") was already listed in the February 1997 phonebook. I'm not sure when it closed as my home phonebooks jump from Feb 97 to Feb 07, but it was not listed as of February 2007.

I've changed the post title from "Building" to reflect this information, and have fixed the street address as well. Thanks folks!

UPDATE 17 October 2011: Added Shumpert's to the post title based on info from commenter Becky Dodson.

UPDATE 5 April 2012 -- The place continues to deteriorate and has now been officially condemned. You can see that the roof is completely gone in spots and that the whole place has been flooded during the recent rains (it's a bad sign when your building leaks to the outside rather than the outside leaking into your building..). I also finally got some shots of the other side with the old Furniture Farm signage:

UPDATE 22 April 2012 -- Well, looks like that's it for this building!

UPDATE 7 May 2012 -- All gone:

While the Queenstown name rather intrigued me, with its New Zealand connection, everything I ever heard about the place led me to believe that it was way too seafood for me. I do seem to remember it getting rather good reviews though, and thus was a little surprised when I drove by a week or two ago and noticed that it was gone. Judging from their sign, the new operation Mayflower Bistro (just given as Mayflower in the phonebook) also seems seafood heavy for my tastes.

Before Queenstown this spot was Fatz Cafe ("Our secret sauce? Mayonaise!") a totally generic or worse place that I have never been able to warm up to despite its SC origins.

This little strip mall, Colonial Villiage across Bush River Road from Dutch Square and on the access road (Colonial Life Boulevard [which used to have a different name, I think]) for I-126 has never really seemed to thrive with about the only constant being the stalwart Melting Pot fondue restaurant.

UPDATE 20 July 2011: Added Garfield's to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 31 August 2020: Update tags, add map icon.

Today's closing comes from commenter IrmoJeff who says:

Hey Ted…Junior Apprentice Closing Spotter, 2nd Class IrmoJeff checking in :D

I thought i’d toss this out there, in case you are ever out towards Irmo/Balentine again. 8027 Broad River Road is the address of a little triangular piece of land that sits at the intersection of Broad River Road and Woodrow Street, sort of just behind where Tez’ used to be. I drove by there the other day, and it looks like whatever business was in there most recently is closed up. I became aware of the building when i was just out of high school in the early 90’s when a friend of a friend opened Smokey Joe’s BBQ. Im not sure what was there previously, but i dont think Smokey Joes was the original occupant. The owner used to joke that he couldnt afford to charge me a flat rate for the all you could eat buffet, that he would have to weigh me going in and coming out :). Anyway after Smokey Joes closed, it was a catering business (or possibly a restaurant) for a while, run by the Catering By Dupre guy i’m pretty sure. I’m also pretty sure Dupre was somehow involved in Smokey Joes, possibly a silent moneyman or something. After that i lost track, but a quick Googling found all these businesses associated with 8027 BRR:

Bill Hinson Auto Sales
Clayton’s Cars
Irmo Properties
Palmetto Glass
Columbia Credit Corp (listed as 8025 BRR)

Im also pretty sure i remember a flower shop, or maybe a gift shop there at one point. I also thought i remembered a car title place there at one point, but i could possibly be confusing it with the Columbia Credit Corp.

I added this pic to clarify which building i was talking about

http://i54.tinypic.com/23izbyu.jpg

I actually did take some pictures of this place in April of 2009 (I know from the date of some other pix from the same day) but appear to have deleted them somehow. As I had no idea what the place had been, I didn't keep good track of them.. I'm pretty sure however that the roof of the building was intact at the time or it would have stayed in my mind. Likewise, the picture that IrmoJeff links above shows the roof intact (but has no EXIF date tag). Given that the roof is currently not intact, I suspect that the incoming Hickory Point convenience store will knock the building down, or at least it doesn't make sense to me to leave a building you hope to salvage open to the rain.

As to the two addresses: The lefthand door is labelled "8025" while the righthand door is labelled "8027". I don't have a guess which address goes with the existing outbuildings.

(Hat tip to IrmoJeff, obviously)

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I normally wouldn't do two Garners Ferry posts in succession (unless I were out of pictures..), but commenter Terry mentioned this place just yesterday (after a spam comment brought it back to the top of the "recent comments" list) saying:

I visited Steve’s on Garners Ferry 3 or 4 times and they had really good sandwiches. Every time I was the only patron in the shop and a lunch crowd of one will not go very far. The parking lot in front of the store is usually packed so I do not know where all the shoppers were.

Well it appears that a lunch crowd of one has gone as far as it could, and the place is now closed. When I first posted about it (in the closing for Larry's) in February 2010, Steve's had taken over two old Larry's locations (that I knew of for sure). Now it appears that both of them have gone under.

More curiously, the sign in the window proclaims "Hibachi Grill Coming Soon" when Mushi Mushi hibachi just a few units down in the same strip closed in September 2010..

UPDATE 3 November 2011 -- Looks like Japan Grill is close to opening:

UPDATE 25 October 2018: Update title with suite info. Add map icon. Update tags.

I had noticed this building on the Sumter Highway in Hopkins several times over the past few years, usually just as I had passed it. I never really got a good look, but had it in my mind that it must be an abandoned motel as in Stratford Arms or Cornell Arms (though I don't believe that building was ever a hotel). With that mindset kind of locked in I had to do a double take when I finally stopped by and found that the "arms" were fire-arms.

The place listed in the February 2008 phonebook, but not the February 2010 one so I'm guessing it closed in 2009, though the condition of the roof-line is pretty bad for just a few years off. I'm not sure what the building would have been originally. Certainly Wateree Arms was not the first tenant (and is in fact not listed in the Feb 1997 book). It was obviously a store of some sort, but not, I think, a gas station as there is not room in front for pumps.

UPDATE 15 July 2011: Added Sister Rose, antiques and riding school to post title based on info by commenter tonkatoy.

I have to say that the mascots for AAA Automotive are a pretty rough looking bunch. The middle one reminds me of a buffed up version of the boss elf from Rudolph, the one that didn't want Herbie to be a dentist.

I see various versions of the Goodyear name when googling this Triangle City address at the corner of 12th Street & D Avenue in West Columbia including the version I used, Goodyear Auto Service Center, as well as Goodyear Tire & Rubber and Goodyear Gemini Auto Care. Mr. Shine seems to have been a carwash operation, and during either the Goodyear or AAA days the place apparently rented U-Haul trailers as well.

It appears that the building was on the market at one point, but LoopNet says that's no longer the case, and indeed the real-estate sign out front offers to lease rather than sell.

(Hat tip to commenter tonkatoy)

Here's a nice square little brick building at the corner of Frink and James Streets in Cayce. You can read the sign on the door if you click through to the high-res version, but the gist is that this beauty shop moved to 1816 Frink Street. Now, I find Salon 2000 listed at 1816 Frink in the February 2007 phonebook (one of those I have without going to the library), but not afterwards, so a) I guess this place could have moved any time before that, and b) apparently it did not last too long there. (There is also a Salon 2000 currently listed in Forest Acres, but since they were both listed in the Feb 2007 book, I don't think they are the same).

Notice the nice graphic of the lady's head in the last picture. The one you are probably looking at is actually a shadow cast by the one painted onto the window. It's a nice effect:

Update 25 November 2012 -- As mentioned in the comments, the windows are now boarded up: