Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This Big Lots store on US-1 in between I-26 and the flea market, was clearly once a grocery store, but I don't know what kind. The design has that certain late 1970s "We have lost our collective minds" look

I know that this was a Big Lots as early as May 2001 because I stopped there on my way to the airport to pick up a camera I didn't care what happened to. What I ended up with was worse than the average drugstore disposable of today, and I ended up with a bunch of mostly awful pictures.

I can't pinpoint the date any closer than that -- I used to ride out to the flea market fairly often in the early 1980s, but what always caught my eye in this strip was the Fat Boy burger place, and the grocery didn't really register.

UPDATE 26 October 2009: Consensus is that it was a Winn-Dixie, so I have updated the post title to that from "Grocery Store" (and updated the closing date from '1980s' to '1990s').

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Updated closing date based on information from commenter Andrew.

This building off of Saint Andrews Road is now an "Ultra Lounge". I'm not sure what it was built as, but I first recall noticing it in the 1980s, when it was a strip club, the name of which I can't remember. After that, it was for a number of years the original site of The Comedy House, now on Decker Boulevard in the old Winn-Dixie building. I think it may have been something after the strip-club and before The Comedy House and after The Comedy House and before Pure, but I'm not sure.

I saw a number of comedy shows there including one guy who made me laugh so hard it hurt, but whose name (or act) I cannot now recall at all. I'm not sure what happened to The Comedy House as it was non-existent for a long while after closing shop here. Normally if a place is moving just as a normal course of business, they will do it as quickly as possible to keep a revenue stream active, but I think it took over a year in this case.

UPDATE 15 October 2009: Added a bunch of extra names to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 29 March 2023: Adding map icon. Also this building has been razed. Click on the address tag for details.

Does Kmart even have a business stragegy anymore? Fabian tactics work if your opponnent needs to keep sending home for men, money and elephants, none of which is the case for Wal Mart, whose new store on the site of the old Bush RIver Mall doomed this Kmart location. If your strategy is "close a store whenever Wal Mart opens one", you might as well just turn the lights off now. I remember the bluelight.com strategy during the dot-com bubble, and the Martha Stewart strategy before she went to jail, but what is it now?

Hardee's decided to not go head-on with or try to out-McDonald McDonald's with their "Thickburger" campaign, and seem to have gotten some traction with it. Target seems to have found a viable "almost as cheap as Wal Mart, but nicer" strategy, why can't Kmart? You would think that after all the effort and money they spent buying Sears they could leverage that brand somehow, or they could always rebrand their stores with the historic and fondly remembered S. S. Kresge nameplate and try to refocus that way.

I've never run so much as a hot-dog cart, so I can't pretend to know the answer, if indeed there is one, but keeping old looking, poorly stocked stores like this one open without any refits until Wal Mart moves in isn't it!

I suppose it wouldn't bother me except I have a certain residual fondness for Kmart since we shopped a good bit there while I was growing up. Mostly it was the Two Notch or Fort Jackson stores, but if we were on the right side of town, it could be this one as well. Kmart is the only store I've ever been lost in, the store I brought my first LP in (The Beach Boys 2-disc "Endless Summer" for $5.25) and the first place I would go when shopping on my own if I ever needed a hammer or a light bulb or anything like that. I even remember the old-style "Blue Light Specials" where they would literally drag a flashing blue light cart to the shelves with the special promotion items.

Oh well, or as the clerks used to be remided with a sticker on the register: TYFSAK.

UPDATE 19 Aug 2009 -- Well, I guess they do have a stragegy:

or perhaps it's just a hope, "Savings Are Here to Stay". And I'm pretty sure that's not how to spell Arrowwood.

UPDATE 14 Septmber 2009: Added an older, but better hilltop picture above.

UPDATE 9 November 2009:

Well the store finally closed yesterday evening. As it happened, I was in the area having had lunch at Fuddruckers, so I stopped by. The store was basically operating out of a small square area in front that was formed with walls of shelving moved to semi-enclose the space. They weren't actually keeping people out of the back part of the store, just indicating that there was nothing to buy back there, so I walked around behind the area to get some pictures of the vast empty spaces.

As the final half hour of the store's life started, the announcer came on and said that everything was now 95% off. I hadn't really planned to buy anything, and indeed there wasn't much left to buy, but anytime there's a 95% off sale, some sort of "There must be something I can use" reflex kicks in, and I started actually looking on the shelves.

In the event, I found some of those electrical sockets that you screw into edison-base light fixtures to make them into electrical outlets -- something I need every ten years or so, and got a number of those. I also picked up some of those "make one phone jack into two phone jacks" plugs, a Rand McNally map, and some sort of Disney Hannah Montanna memory card that claims to have songs on it though I'm not even sure I have a reader for that format.

As I was checking out, the announcer was saying, "and if you know anyone who's hiring, let your cashier know", which was sad, but I suppose very appropos.

After I left, I went over to Dutch Square for a little while then came to the parking lot to take an exterior picture of the storefront and roadside sign. Then it occurred to me to drive up to the Dutch Square parking lot again, and take a few shots from the hill over Hardee's.

The blue-light is now dark.

UPDATE 22 August 2012 -- As mentioned by commenter Andrew, something is going on at this old Kmart. The front doors have been boarded up, but with a new access, and there are construction dumpsters out front. I don't know if the Remington College poster on the building indicates that they will be expanding from across the parking lot into this building or if they just leased the right to hang a billboard for their operation (in the OfficeMax) there. At any rate, there is no visible construction permit to give any better idea of what is happening:

UPDATE 1 October 2012 -- Construction is going on:

UPDATE 7 October 2019: Add map icon, update tags.

I find this Rite Aid closing interesting because it happened so soon after the conversion from Eckerd's, so in 2007, they paid a lot of money to redo all the signage and branding, interior and exterior, and then in 2009, closed the store.

I think it was a classy touch to transfer the store's perscriptions across the street to their competitors at CVS rather than sending customers to a Rite Aid further away. I hope the building can be re-used, it's still fairly new and appears quite nice.

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I had seen this place on Saint Andrews, and think I saw some of it's flyers, but since I'm not a really big steak fan, I hadn't ever really looked into it. I see that the concept is take out or delivery for steaks instead of pizza, burgers or subs, and that strikes me as pretty odd. First, I have never gotten the appeal of "take out". I'd say that's because I work at home, but even when I spent most of my life at the office, I still didn't want to eat at the house. At a restaurant they have people to bring stuff right to your table and you don't have to wash the dishes or take out the trash. Second, steak seems like an odd take-out item. People are very finicky about it and considering how often burger or pizza topping orders go awry, it's a big leap of faith to expect the right cut and the right degree of doneness when you can't send it back.

I have to say the business strategy being explicated by the door sign seems a bit dubious as well. I want Columbia businesses to succeed and certainly hope they will be back, but it's hard to see how several months without any money coming in will help to make that happen. (And if they remain part of the Steak Out chain, how can they revamp the menu?) It worked for Stevie B's, but more often than not any sign using the word remodeling is followed by a sign that says For Sale.

(Hat tip to commenter Kc!)

Update 24 Jan 2010: Well it seems to me that I can move this one from the "temporary" category to the "not coming back" category. The note from 4 May 2009 promising a "Fall 2009" reopening is still posted on the door, but now an un-picked-up phonebook is on the doorstep and un-picked-up mail is on the floor inside, also as far as I can tell no work at all has been done inside -- everything appears to be in an identical state as to when I posted the original closing.

UPDATE 7 May 2010 -- This is pretty conclusive, I'm afraid:

UPDATE 27 May 2010 -- Now it's up for lease:

UPDATE 19 July 2010 -- Finally got around to taking a picture of the original Steak Out location at 2421 Bush River Road (now Real Mexico):

UPDATE 13 Oct 2010 -- Tony O's Pizza is now open in this building:

I was out in the rain today in the Harbison area, and noticed this place as I drove back to the Interstate. I guess I'd heard the name Smokey Bones somewhere or other, but given my low interest in barbecue, I had no real idea where the place was, or that it was gone. From the note left on the door, I'm guessing that the same owner runs the listed Red Lobster and Olive Garden locations.

The architecture of the place is interesting. The entrance looks vaguely asian, and I wonder if the building were some sort of asian restaurant before Smokey Bones.

UPDATE 16 November 2011: Updated the closing date based on commenter Andrew's research.

I've written about this building before, when it was a D's Wings. Since then, a Tex-Mex operation called Baja's Southwestern Grill has moved in -- and out. I was going to give them a try sometime, but in the event never got around to it until it was too late, and the restaurant curse on this building (and Saint Andrews Road in general) continues.

I think something fairly easy the owner could do to make the site viable would be to connect the parking lot to that of the gas station next door. That would give people exiting this site access to a traffic light so that left turns to get back on I-26 wouldn't be so bad. It seems like an obvious idea, so perhaps the station owners don't want the extra traffic.

Good on the owner for the forthright and informative closing door-note!

Hat tip to commenter Ken for the heads-up that Baja's was gone.

I noticed this defunct building / strip mall on Sunset Boulevard recently when I stopped to take some pictures of the old Quincy's building next door.

Of the three businesses that google suggests were here, I can only sort of recall hearing about or perhaps seeing Pizza House. At one point back in the 90s, I went on a quest for Columbia's best pizza and hit a large number of pizza restaurants, but never this one. At this remove I'm not sure why. It could be the distance, but during that time, I did try the nearby Grecian Gardens for pizza, so I doubt that was it. It could be that it was one of those places where you order at the counter rather than at your table -- I try to avoid those. Or perhaps it looked decrepit even back then.

The other two businesses I'm fairly sure I never heard of. Debbie's Plants seems like a fairly self-explanatory name, but not one that would attract me, and the medical facility seems to have either been eldercare or mental health care or perhaps both.

I see that the whole complex is for sale. It looks like it would take fairly extensive work to make it look decent again -- it wouldn't surprise me if whoever buys it just knocks everything down.

UPDATE 11 April 2010: Added 1977 Bellsouth yellow page ad.

UPDATE 18 October 2012 -- As I speculated above, the whole place was knocked down some time ago. I have a more extensive set of pictures (though taken on a much less sunny day) somewhere, but for now these from 19 February 2011 tell the story:

UPDATE 13 February 2017 -- This strip is now Salsaritas and Starbucks:

Tweeter was a Circuit City-like store on Harbison Boulevard in a Columbiana Center outparcel. I only went in the place once, and I'm afraid that it worked itself onto "not a great place" list for reasons mostly (but not entirely) beyond the staff's control. I forget exactly what I was looking for, or if it was just browsing, but the store was fairly crowded, and apparently a salesman at the car stereo speaker kiosk had just been asked by a customer to put in the customer's CD to see what it would sound like on the Tweeter's speakers. Mistake: suddenly the entire store was filled with the loudest possible Gonna F*** my B**** after I slap her up rap song imagineable. There were several parents with kids in the store and I saw them cringe. Granted the staff was blindsided, but they should either have thought about incidents like that beforehand, or at least have acted more swiftly in the event. I have no problem with whatever you listen to, but there are times and places.

Anyway, the whole chain went bankrupt in 2008 according to Wikipedia. I don't know why, but apparently there's not a lot of space in that area of retail. Even the #2 store failed, so I guess it's not a surprise that stores further down the food chain couldn't make it either.

UPDATE 1 March 2010: Sky City also has a post on this Tweeter.

UPDATE 6 January 2012 -- As noted by commenter Andrew, this (drastically remodelled) building is now open as Jared The Galleria Of Jewelry:

This closing continues a recent series of dead restaurants on Saint Andrews Road. One of the very first closings I did was of the Wendy's on Two Notch in Dentsville. If I recall correctly, I said how much I enjoyed Wendy's when they first came to town, and how they gradually seemed to lose their way as many fast food chains have.

I don't know specifically what happened to this store (being on Saint Andrews can't have helped!), but the last two times I have had occasion to stop at a Wendy's (once in Aiken and once on Forest Drive), the service and food have been very indifferent -- not at all like the can-do! store that could get you a decent burger the way you wanted it almost by the time you finished being rung up. I don't doubt the disasterous ad campaign with the guy wearing the red "Wendy" pigtails helped more than a few of their stores shuffle off this mortal coil as well.

UPDATE 8 September 2017: Added full street address and some tags. Also found this LoopNet listing that says the building is still vacant, but has recently had a plan approved to connect to the traffic light and "would be great for a breakfast restaurant".

UPDATE 13 December 2019 -- Now Ms B's Southern Soul Food: