Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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:

This Food Lion in Airport Square at the intersection of Airport Boulevard and The Charleston Highway, was open as recently as 3 March 2009 when they posted a want ad for a sales manager.

I posted a number of closings in this general area lately, though not all of them actually happened lately. On the whole I think its fair to say the business climate is not good there. I'm not super familiar with the local stores, but I'm drawing a blank on a grocery store closer to here than the Bi-Lo in Parkland Plaza, which is a fair drive down Knox Abbott. I guess there's the Wal-Mart and Bi-Lo on US-1, but that's about the same distance.

UPDATE 4 Feb 2011 -- It's now a "Save A Lot" grocery store. I went in the one in Aiken once and didn't see any brands I had heard of..

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 7 Feb 2011: Updated the post title with a more precise closing date based on the comments.

UPDATE 13 January 2021: Update tags, add map icon.

I don't know when this Burger King went under, but it may have never come back from that time in the 90s when the local franchisee (who owned all the Columbia BKs) got in a dispute with corporate and all Columbia Burger Kings closed. Eventually new ownership was found and a number of them came back (with special commercials featuring "Blues Doctor" Drink Small..), but several never did.

I'm not sure when the follow-on business: TitleMax/CheckMax closed, but I believe it was this year.

I find it rather interesting that the street number displayed on the building is clearly 1402, but google is adamant that the real number is 1400.

I first wrote about this former steakhouse when Crazy Buffett folded, but it now appears that the second Chinese buffet operation in the building is history as well. I'm not sure why -- it seems like a decent location with good visibility and plenty of traffic passing by and I can't think of any other Chinese buffets in the area. There's the second Eggroll Station on Sunset, but that's not a buffet.

Notice how the left side of the building still proclaims it to be a "restaurante", a bit of signage remaining from the Mexican incarnation of the place..

UPDATE 16 May 2013 -- As mentioned by commenter Andrew, this place is being knocked down:

I'm pretty sure this building, on the North side of Knox Abbott Drive just past Silver City was once a Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits. I think various folks have tagged it as such in the comments, and it has that odd "Why not cover our store with a facade of fake rocks?" 1970s look of the other two older Popeyes locations in Columbia that I know of: This one on Farrow Road and this much restauranted building on Decker Boulevard (which has actually just had the rock facade ripped off in the last month or so).

Currently the building hosts the Vacuum Center vacuum cleaner store, but I'm unsure if this was the immediate follow on to Popeyes or if there were one or more other tenants intervening. I have the vague feeling that Vacuum Center may once have been in Parkland Plaza and that I may have bought a reconditioned Electrolux from them, but that may have been another store entirely. Popeyes in the meantime is still around in some form and has Columbia Stores on Augusta Road and Garners Ferry Road. (And, yes, they spell it without an apostrophe, which really grates on me..)

UPDATE 26 January 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

The Shrimper was a lontime seafood restaurant on Knox Abbott near The Charleston Highway. If you've read many of these closings, you'll know I'm no fan of seafood, so I never actually ate at The Shrimper though I was certainly aware of it.

Apparently not aware enough though, as I didn't really notice its passing until quite recently. I don't have a date, but it was recently enough that many online sources still list it at this address.

The new operation is Brunches which appears to bill itself mostly as a breakfast place. I like breakfast in principle, but not enough to wake up early and it it, so I've never eaten there either. (If I'm going to do breakfast, it's usually pancakes and grits at 2am..)

UPDATE 9 June 2010: Added the 1974 Southern Bell Yellow Pages ad.

UPDATE 9 June 2010: Added "Lum's Restaurant" to post title based on comment and 1970 Yellow Pages.

UPDATE 18 September 2020: Here is a Shrimper cup that somehow came to be in my sister's cupboard:

Also updating tags and adding map icon.

Welcome to all the folks coming in from The State! Be sure to check out the Alphabetical Closings for a list of other places you might remember.

This defunct I-26 adult entertainment complex apparently occupies two lots in Cayce off of Old Dunbar Road. The front lot is 1995 Old Dunbar Road, and the back lot is off the adjacent side street at 115 Overland Drive.

Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote about this storefront before as Parkland Pharmacy. CVS was the successor to Parkland and made what was a rather interesting and quirky pharmacy into yet another chain drugstore.

I'm not a big fan of CVS in general -- for some reason they never seem quite as nice as Rite-Aid or my preferred store, Walgreen's. They do have a nice "no scent at all" liquid laundry detergent though, and this store was fine for what it was.

They have left Parkland Plaza for the new corner lot across the street opened up by the demolition of the Cinderella HoJo. When I took these pictures, there was no indication of what, if anything, would come to occupy this spot. Parkland Plaza is already hurting; they certainly don't need a longterm vacancy here.

UPDATE 24 June 2009: The move is complete, and the CVS is now open at the old HoJo site:

UPDATE 29 Oct 2010 -- To date nothing has moved into the CVS spot at Parkland Plaza:

UPDATE 4 July 2022: Update tags, add map icon.

OK, this one is very vague. Hopefully someone will recall more details than this, but at one time this lot (now housing an ATM drive-through) on "B" Avenue in Triangle City West Columbia (up the hill from Zesto) had a WWII-surplus Quonset Hut standing on it.

We only went there a couple of times that I can recall since few of my mother's shopping destinations were in the area (perhaps we had gone to The Factory Outlet on 12th Street..), but the place was some sort of surplus store with all kinds of junk. It was sort of a combination of Big Lots and The Dollar Store, but it was definitely a local, one-off, operation. I have the feeling that it may have been un-airconditioned, with noisy fans running in the rear, but I might be mixing that up with some of the used-furniture stores we used to go to. To the best of my recollection, we never bought anything there, but it was definitely an interesting experience to go through the stock.

Anybody else remember this place?

1306 Charleston Highway:

7007 Parklane Road:

Chappy's Fish & Chips was a constant media presence on the radio (and in The State as in the coupon from 10 November 1987 above), though I think the most common image I had of the whole "fish & chips" concept came from that English N'er-do-well Andy Capp.

The 2911 Two Notch location referred to in this ad is now the McDonald's at the intersection of Beltline and Two Notch, though I believe the original Chappy's building was demolished. I never ate at Chappy's because I don't like fish (or the smell of fish), and have never been to England, so I can comment neither on how good nor on how authentic the fish and chips were.

Though it's not mentioned in this ad, Chappy's was connected with a very similar (identical except for the name perhaps?) operation called Cedric's. At this remove, it seems like an odd strategy to dilute your concept into two brands, especially since as far as I can recall, the restaurants were a purely Columbia phenomenon. The Chappy's radio commercials used to end with an exhortation to Be sure and visit my friend Cedric too!. I think the stores had at least one English "double decker" bus that they used for promotions. Wonder what happened to that?

At any rate, I'm pretty sure the stores didn't make it through the 90s. I don't think "fish & chips" was ever going to be "big" (though the coupon suggests they were moving in a more Southern direction as well -- "hushpuppies"), perhaps it wasn't big enough to support that many stores, perhaps the owners wanted to retire -- whatever the reason I don't think you can get fish & chips at all in Columbia now. And "Andy Capp" has long since left The State as well.

UPDATE 18 November 2009: Added pix of the Charleston Highway location, made minor edits to the text and added the Charleston Highway and Broad River locations to the post title.

UPDATE 27 May 2010: Added newspaper ad from The State 19 Feb 1979

UPDATE 27 June 2010: Added pictures of the Parklane location.

UPDATE 18 August 2017 -- The Charleston Highway location is now a Cricket phone store: