Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

4730 Forest Drive:

6118 Saint Andrews Road

7900 Garners Ferry Road:

Commenter Mr. BO sends the pictures of the Garners Ferry Rite Aid, saying

I remember when this place was Rosewood Furniture which was raised to make an Eckerds, then I think it was a CVS for a short while before becoming a Rite-Aid. Now Wallgreens purchased the place. With a Wallgreens just a block away, I sort of fear for this store's future. They're not in the system yet so I can't do my prescriptions from Rite-aid's web site and the transfer function only lets you select the store across Garner's ferry from Hazelwood.

I had noticed similar signs on the Forest Acres and Irmo Rite Aid stores: This Rite Aid now has a Walgreens Pharmacy, which is rather like going to Sears and seeing a sign saying This Sears is now stocked by J C Penny.

Looking at google, and Wikipedia, what seems to have been going on is that Walgreens tried to buy the whole of Rite Aid, but the merger was not approved for anti-trust reasons, and Walgreens ended up with only about 2000 Rite Aid locations. Now, the rump Rite Aid chain is in negotiations with the Albertson grocery chain to merge with it.

What actually happens to the stores that Walgreens got is unclear. I would expect many of them to eventually be reflagged, but some of them are really too close to existing Walgreens locations, and those will probably be closed. How close is "too close"? We'll know when it happens, I suppose.

UPDATE 25 September 2018 -- As mentioned by several commenters, the Saint Andrews Road store is now officially a Walgreens:

As reported in The State as the plan was announced, West Marine, has moved from Dutch Square to Columbiana Station.

I have not yet gotten a picture of the new location, but here is the company announcement of the opening and ribbon cutting at the new store on 19 March 2018.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew, I believe)

East Point Academy is a Chinese language (Mandarin) immersion charter school that set up shop here in what I still think of as the Sandy's plaza in 2012.

This location is now their K4/K5 campus, with their elementary campus being on Leaphart road. Apparently they are doing quite well, and are opening a new campus on Chris Road this fall (2018) which will replace this one. You can see the WLTX story on the new campus here.

Well, it seems that whenever I have gotten by this Widewater Square Harveys lately, I have either been shooting against the sun, or it was dark. You can see some slightly better pictures of this store in the closing for the Bi-Lo it replaced. (In fact, I don't actually have any pictures of the Bi-Lo there at all).

I don't have anything special to say about this store, just that it is part of the general closing of Columbia's Harveys locations, and that I have heard no plans for the future of the building. Of course it is early yet for that.

UPDATE 17 April 2023 -- Commenter Homer sends this picture of the new storefront for the upcoming WorldFood Marketplace (as discussed in the comments):

Also adding the map icon.

As mentioned several times in Have Your Say, the Chili's on Harbison has closed.

The story from Palmetto Weekend says they were unable to renew their lease, which argues that Harbison Court may already have something else planned.

I believe they were already winding down last week, as I went by at 10pm on Friday night, and they had already turned off the front facade lights by the time I drove around to that side of the building.

I used to go to Chili's fairly frequently, and still do like it, but my main reason was that it was a decent place that stayed open late every night. While they still do that in the Florida locations (or the ones I've visited), they no longer do that here, pretty much leaving that niche to Applebee's.

(Hat tip to commenter ED)

UPDATE 17 April 2019 -- You can see the signage for The Krab Hut now:

I'm not sure when this Cayce computer store closed, but Firefox says the security certificate for their web site expired in 2017 so I'm going to go with that.

I like the latticework on this brick building. I'm guessing it probably dates from the '50s or '60s.

This one is kind of odd. After what was apparently a somewhat prolonged build, the proposed Fresh Market on Sunset Boulevard in Lexingtion was boarded up, giving rise to several local media stories, like this one from The State, that struck a reassuring tone, indicating that the store was still expected to open this Spring (ie: now). Conspicious, however, in the spin of those stories was a very tepid quote from Fresh Market corporate, which said essentially: No Comment.

Then last month The State reported that this store will *not* open in 2018 at all:

The company plans to focus on “improving core operations” at current stores, “so it has decided not to open any previously announced new stores for 2018,” according to a statement issued by the company. “Our focus remains on strengthening and growing our in-store operations, guest service program, merchandising selections, future offerings and, of course, our team members, as well as planning and executing new store openings after 2018.”

This strikes me as an extraordinary statement that has a blood-in-the-water feel to it. If the company had opened the stores it had been building and then put a hold on expansion, nobody would have said anything, but in these hard times for grocers, pausing (forever?) the opening of already (mostly) built locations sends a message quite apart from the bland words. I hope I'm wrong as I quite like the Fresh Market, but it doesn't sound good.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 13 April 2019: The Free Times reports that Fresh Market has abandoned the site and that instead a Publix Greenwise Market will be coming instead.

I've also changed the post title status to Cancelled and added a map icon.

UPDATE 25 August 2020: Changed the street address from "5328 Sunset Boulevard" to "5336 Sunset Boulevard Suite A", to match the buisness address used by Greenwise Market, which opened in this building in December 2019 and closed in August 2020. Also updated the map icon to use the better address.

UPDATE 18 June 2022: It looks like Prisma Health will be going into this site. See here.

Mostly I knew Silver City from their old location at 906 Knox Abbott Drive. When I was a graduate assistant every Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday..) when the new comics came out, I would drive from campus to there and peruse the weekly haul.

They moved to this old Hardee's building closer to the river while I was living out of town. I did stop by several times, but by that point, I was getting my fix through a mail-order subscription service, so it wasn't quite the same, though the staff was quite pleasant and I did pick up some stuff.

According to their Facebook page the store's last day was 2 December 2017. When I took these pictures, I had a brief chat with the building owner who said that they were looking for a new tenant in the building as is rather than taking it down and starting over. I was glad to hear that, as these old Hardee's buildings are pretty thin on the ground now. After the razing of the one at Eggroll Station, this is the last in the Columbia area, and I believe the owner said there were only one or two elsewhere.

(Hat tip to commenter Thomas S)

UPDATE 12 October 2021 -- Now The Modern Locksmith.com:

Also adding map icon.

UPDATE 13 August 2022 -- Here is a picture from commenter Jimmy Freeman of the roadside sign for this building when it was a Hardee's:

I'm not a cupcake (or really any kind of cake) fan myself, but if you are: Don't despair. Cupcake Paradise is no longer in this old Piggly Wiggly center at the corner of Lake Murray Boulevard & Columbiana Drive, but they are still around. They moved to 7512 Woodrow Street (Irmo, not Shandon) sometime in the January/February 2018 timeframe and are up and running there now.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

As noted by commenter Andrew, the Aaron's on 12th Street in Cayce has closed. The sign pitches it as a move, but I'm pretty sure both of the locations mentioned were already in existence.

I'm not sure what this building was built for, but given that the right hand part looks like former automotive bays, I'd guess some sort of repair operation.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)