Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This Chick-Fil-A on Main Street next to the old Downtowner Motor Inn closed last week after being unable to agree a new lease with the building owner.

With this store closing not too long after the Five Points location opened, the number of downtown Chick-Fil-As is back to one.

The cows are gonna be unhappy..

UPDATE 218 January 2021: Add tags, map icon

Depending on if you believe showcase.com or LoopNet (which has a nice aerial view), this building was built either in 1942 or 1939. Either way, it's an old one, and has a little character, at least from the front side.

I'm not entirely sure if the Stone Manufacturing Company is defunct or has just moved. They are still listed in the February 2011 phonebook with the notation "undwr" which coupled with the fact that the location is, or was, somehow involved with the still extant internet underwear retailing site underneath.com, I take to mean that it is or was a textile operation making underclothes. There's probably a joke in there somewhere about how people in glass houses shouldn't wear Stone's..

Here at the corner of North Main & Sunset Drive is another Columbia area Burger King not serving hamburgers.

However in this case, unlike many cases where a "remodeling" sign is more a fond wish than a hard fact, I think we can expect this store to be back in business before too long as there is actual work underway inside and out.

Heck, even the french fries are being remodeled!

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 8 March 2012 -- Repainting has started:

UPDATE 24 October 2012: I've got some pix somewhere, but I shouldn't wait to find them to say that this Burger King is done remodeling and is open again.

Driving down Sunset to North Main the other day, I noticed that King's Chef Chinese Restaurant is closed -- closed and fenced off, to be exact. I'm not entirely sure when this happened, but I drove by a number of times in December and didn't notice anything wrong, so I'm guessing January.

Just from looking at the building, it was evident that it had been a chain fast-food place of some sort before King's Chef moved in, and a glance at my 1997 phonebook confirms that the original tenant was McDonald's. I don't recall when that closed (and don't have the directories at home to research it), but I think King's Chef has been there a good while, so I would guess early 2000s.

King's Chef is not the only re-purposed fast food in the area. Almost directly across the street is a Long John Silver's which has been turned into a TitleMax. (And of course, the Family Dollar next to King's Chef is a re-purposed Eckerd Drugs.)

UPDATE 6 February 2012: Commenter Thomas notes that there was a fire here and that they are rehabilitating the building, so I have appended "temporary" to the post title.

UPDATE 18 September 2012 -- It's open again (and has been for a while):

Here's a nice little Main Street storefront that was a jewelers at one time -- notice the "display case" window on the right front side.

Colonial Finance was the last operation there, and apparently decamped to the Bi-Lo strip mall on Devine Street at the end of August 2011. I got the name Reyner's Jewelers from a 1948 Columbia Bible College yearbook which is on line for keywords, but which I can't really see without joining a yearbook site. However, notice that you can still see part of the name in the flooring in one of the pictures.

The building as a whole (not just this storefront) is apparently the "Berry Building", the site of the old Berry's On Main.

UPDATE 2 February 2012 -- Here is Colonial Finance's Devine Street location:

The White Mule is another recent casualty of Main Street, following shortly after the closings of Henessey's and Kimbrell's.

I'd heard the name from time to time, but really wasn't exactly sure where it was. Judging by the stairs in the entranceway, it was a basement club, and judging from the menu on the still extant web site it was a little more upscale than your basic burgers & nachos show-pub.

The State story mentioning the closing dates it to "last week". Given that the story ran on 7 January 2012, the inference I draw is that The White Mule closed out with the year at the end of 2011.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

UPDATE 23 January 2012: Added Jammin' Java to the post title based on the comments. I recall the name, but never realized this is where it was.

As long as I'm doing defunct downtown restaurants, I might as well do Mayfair Grill as it comes up fairly often. (And often gets confused with the Mayflower restaurant).

Unfortunately, it's another place I know very little about.

I can say that it first listed in the November 1954 Southern Bell telephone directory, and last listed in the January 1984 edition. They never ran a full yellow pages ad, but did have a slogan under their listing for a number of years, one which I seem to have misplaced for the nonce.

I can also say after consulting an old city directory that the property at 343 South Main was another restaurant, called Louis' Grill immediately before Mayfair Grill opened.

Here's what commenter Peter Hoffman had to say about the place:

The “Mayflower Diner” was on South Main Street, across the tracks from the station, on land that’s now part of the Swearingen Engineering Center property (the empty space between the phone lines and the track).

It was a great place to eat. A complete cross-section of Columbia would be there from students, to blue-collar, to state politicians. The food was really good ‘meat and three veg’ and served on willow-pattern plates and the prices were something a student could handle.

It’s been about 30 years since the place was demolished in the name of ‘progress’ but I still miss it.

And here's an amplification and slight correction from commenter badger:

Oh, and that little diner on South Main was actually the “Mayfair” Grill. I think it was open till around ’85. Across from it was the old SCE&G headquarters, currently occupied by USC.

Noticed this vacancy on North Main near the trestle the other day, presumably another casualty of the housing crash. The building didn't strike me as anything special from the outside, but I have to say the interior description sounds surprisingly opulent:

I noticed this vacant funeral home driving down Main Street near River Drive the other day. I could weed the pictures down further, but I like the clouds in the long shots too much to lose them.

You can still see the label-scar for the business name on the front of the building, and on the turned-inside-out roadside sign if you look closely enough. I had no doubts what the building was even before seeing them however as the design is pretty unequivocal. That's not to say it's generic -- I really like the sharp points and slopes of the roof-line. The online property data says it was built in 1960, which I have no problem believing, and LoopNet says it sits on a 1 acre lot, which I would not have guessed.

UPDATE 13 March 2025: Updating tags and adding map icon.

Here's another place I never visited. Inasmuch as I was aware of it at all, I figured it was probably too fancy for my tastes.

I hadn't realized how poorly focused my picture of the door sign was until looking at it on a normal sized screen. I believe it says something to the effect that they are closed for renovations and will re-open in November. If so they only have a few days to meet the posted deadline. I have to wonder if the sign isn't wishful thinking however, as the phone has been disconnected, and the web site is bringing up a default "no page" page. The only hopeful reason I can think of for those two omens is if a change in ownership is involved along the way...

(Hat tip to commenter Midnight Rambler)

UPDATE 30 November 2011: Added the street address to the post title having forgotten to do so initially.

UPDATE 24 January 2011: Added Ruff's Hardware to the post title based on the comments. I remember the Ruff's at Richland Mall, but don't believe I ever went to the Main Street one.

UPDATE 17 Feb 2013: Took the "(temporary?)" tag off the post title as it is plainly not coming back at this point. (Hat tip to commenter Justin for pointing that out).