Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I'm not real sure what Southern Armature did. The place has bays like a garage, and an armature is part of a generator or alternator, but I can't imagine a business based on just fixing alternator parts. Perhaps they specialized in alternators as a whole, or electrical systems. Anyway, they are listed in this year's (Feb 2013) phonebook, so the sale and rezoning for City Gas is a pretty recent development.

When I first noticed the "sold" sign, the place was still intact. As of 18 August, they have ripped most of it apart, though so far they have kept the endpieces.

UPDATE 18 September 2013 -- Construction continues:

UPDATE 15 October 2013 -- work continues. The canopy looks done:

UPDATE 21 February 2014 -- City Gas is open:

Not sure what happened to my pictures here -- it looks like maybe I forgot to reset from a nighttime ISO to daylight before starting to shoot. The essentials are clear enough though, if more than a bit washed out.

The Atlanta Bread in North Myrtle Beach closed either last year or in 2011, I'm not really sure anymore. The only other ABC at the beach was this one on SC-54 just west of the US-17 bypass interchange. For a number of years, it sat sort of all by its lonesome (though the sideroad it was on obviously implied grander plans), but finally this last year Target started building behind it, and finally opened in late 2012 or early 2013.

I had had some concerns about the place -- it was the sort of operation which seemed to have no idea how many cookies to bake to last out the whole day (I'm pretty sure your loss in day old cookies is smaller than the loss you have from not making a sale..) and had the infuriating habit, which is pretty rare in chain stores, of not honoring their posted hours if things were slow. Still, it was nice to have a bread-bowl of soup there for lunch every now and then, and I figured that if they had hung on until Target opened, they were home free. That proved not to be the case, and the place was closed when I went by in late July.

The rest of the little strip mall has a gym, fro-yo, and a party shop. I had to include some pictures of the punch-me-pirate, including the one below from a few years ago.

Bumble Botique & Bee Maternal were really, as I understand it, one operation with the area under one nameplate specializing in kids' clothes and the area under the other specializing in maternity wear. Commenter Matt suggests the stores were doing OK, but were a sideline for the owners and eventually started to become too much to deal with.

I'm reasonably sure these are the storefronts previously anyway occupied by Corma's Health Foods and Bobby's Barber Shop though they have been extensively remodeled.

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

It appears someone made a big withdrawal.

Like the Automated Post Office before it, this vanished ATM sat in the parking lot at the Shoppes At Woodhill (The former Woodhill Mall).

I noticed one day last month when I was having lunch on the patio at Jimmy John's that it was gone, and I cannot now recall what bank it was affiliated with..

There's been a fair bit of musical chairs going on at the old Dick Dyer Toyota lot on Two Notch. The latest is that this Prestige has moved from the old gas-station-looking building at the Northeast corner of Two Notch and Albritton to the old Dick Dyer Bodyshop building at the corner of Windover Street and Two Notch. Meanwhile, the body shop has moved into the old dealership building proper.

UPDATE 15 October 2013 -- It's now Spunky's Auto Sales:

Well, it took me quite a long time to get the interior shot here, largely because every time I would come in the door of the food court, a sample tray holder from the Asian restaurant would make a beeline on me. I really appreciate that kind of hustle, but it makes it difficult to inconspicuously take a picture when you are the sole focus of someone's attention! I finally recently got a bit of a zoom from the back end of the court. You can see the boarded up section where Chick-Fil-A used to be just to the right of China Max.

I was actually in the place to look at lawnmowers at Sears, and I note that they seem to be giving up on the mall. The mall stays open until 9PM, but Sears turns out the lights at 8PM, at least during the week. It certainly surprised me.

UPDATE 13 August 2013: Forgot the hat tip to commenter Trina.

UPDATE 28 January 2021: Adding full address, tags and map icon.

Commenter James notes that bicycle shop Bike To Nature has pedaled across the street from its old location here at 5182 Sunset to the strip mall at 5175 Sunset. Commenter John R notes that this move (and the neighboring Enterprise move) are due to the prospective widening of Hope Ferry Road.

Apparently they have moved everything except the kitchen sink.

(Hat tip to commenter James)

UPDATE 17 February 2014 -- The original building (along with the adjacent Enterprise Rent-A-Car building) has now been demolished for construction:

Looks like Airport Inn in Cayce, where ironically all the rooms are ground-floor, is renovating.

I like the blue, white & yellow color scheme on the signs. The building actually looks to be in pretty good shape, at least from a distance.

UPDATE 10 August 2013: Changed incorrect 935 address in post title to correct 1935.

UPDATE 13 May 2014 --Open again:

Well, while this was not unexpected (as commenter Jay raised the flag months ago), it was still a shock when I drove downtown the other night looking for some Harvest Grain & Nut Pancakes.

I guess that over the years I have eaten at this IHOP dozens of times. It was kind of like riding in an airplane to go in there: You were always sitting closer to someone else than you really wanted to be -- the positive spin would be "intimate", but the place was *tiny*, and you never knew quite what sort of conversation you would be overhearing. Still I enjoyed my visits. The waitresses seemed to keep an eagle eye out for my glass needing a refill, and the fare was basic enough that it was always pretty good.

The State has an article on the tear-down and rebuilding of this IHOP. Apparently it has been there since 1968, which sounds about right to me. The new building will be bigger and have a patio. From going by the site, it appears to me that they will be extending their site onto the vacant lot on Assembly between the IHOP and the neighbooring law office.

This was the last classic look IHOP in the Columbia area. The other one was torn down in the early 2000s and not rebuilt.

(Hat tip to commenter Jay)

UPDATE 21 January 2014 -- Laissez les bon temps rouler!:

Somehow I never made it to this Monterrey in all the years that it was there (and they were considerable) despite the fact that I often visited the adjacent Sounds Familiar and comic store.

I believe with this closing, the chain is down to the one in the Vista and the one on Knox Abbott.

(Hat tip to commenter J.P.)

UPDATE 12 February 2020 -- Now El Paraiso: