Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I'm not really sure when this KFC closed, but the property looks so distressed that I'm putting it in the early 2000s rather than the last couple of years. I've never been a fan of chicken (or any other bird, come to that), so I have no standing to criticize the chain, but I always felt it was rather pusillanimous to change the official name from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC: You sell fried chicken! Stand up for it! (I also didn't like the commercials with the animated Colonel -- I remember the real Colonel in commercials, and it seems disrespectful of your founder to make a cartoon out of him now that he's gone..).

The only other thing I have to say about KFC in general is that every time I see the "Livers & Gizzards" signage up, I think 'Lewis Grizzard'.

It seems a bit odd that there seems to be no attempt to sell the property, or at least I saw no "For Sale" signs in evidence.

UPDATE 7 Jan 2010: Comments say I was wrong about the closing period, so I have changed the post title date from 'early 2000s' to 'late 2000s'.

UPDATE 30 January 2016 -- It's now China Wing Basket:

PowerOne Computer Warehouse was a rebuilt PC store that I believe opened on Saturday 29 August 2009. I say that with some confidence, because I had taken a bunch of pictures of the nearby The Aquarium & Pet Shop on that day, and stopped in at PowerOne on my walk back over to Fuddruckers where I was eating lunch.

I found them in the midst of something of a mini-crisis because they had not intended to open on 29 August, but there was a printing error in all the flyers that were distributed in the paper forcing them to open several days before they were ready. This meant that almost nothing in the store had a price on it, and in many cases not even of description of the PCs processor speed, amount of RAM, OS version etc. It looked like they had some pretty good stuff in the store, but as I didn't really need anything, I didn't persue the prices of any the systems.

I don't know if the unplanned opening somewhat "wrong-footed" them as the Brits might say, but for whatever reason, they didn't make it to New Years.

I recall seeing Dugan's Sports Bar from time to time as a drove Bush River Road, but I don't know anything about it other than that it preceded PowerOne into the 1807 storefront.

UPDATE 4 Jan 2010: Commenter Jeff notes that home theater company Sound Advice was once in the space.

UPDATE 22 August 2012 -- It appears that the place is preparing to open as one of the many new (and controversial) "Internet Sweepstakes" operations in the Columbia area:

UPDATE 24 October -- Well the sweepstakes thing never happened; I believe the law came down on all of them before this one got opened. Anyway, it's Sissy's Furniture now.

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope your holidays were great, and that Santa was good to you!

Anyway..

I first did a closing on this building when it had just ceased being Tiffany's Bakery in 2008. The place was vacant a good while after that, then Granville's moved in.

This story from The State suggests that the place opened in July of 2009, so it had about a six-month run. While generally upbeat, that story also has some ominous IRS issues to be worked through mentioned. Whether that had an impact on the place closing, I don't know.

Commenter Mike D. gave the initial notice in Have Your Say and when I drove by to take these pictures, the place still had a hopeful Closed For Private Partysign in the door. He reports that since these pictures, a For Sale sign has gone up. Too bad!

(Hat tip to Mike D., obviously)

UPDATE 4 Jan 2010: Fixed typo in street address.

UPDATE 8 Jan 2010: Added a picture I forgot earlier.

UPDATE 13 April 2010 -- It's now Conrad's:

Well, it seems that the second location of Mangia! Mangia! is now history. I believe I ate there only twice, once in West Columbia, and once, very recently, in the new Spears Creek location.

I don't recall much about the West Columbia visit, but I chose pizza at the Spears Creek venue, and found it pretty good. Not necessarily "drive almost to Elgin" good, but nice.

I have no idea what happened to the place, but I suspect the "drive to Elgin" factor did have something to do with it. In the first place, "out of sight, out of mind" -- I only visited recently because I kept forgetting that the place existed. Second, timing. It's clear that the area is going to experience the eastward drift of the metro area as the Two Notch Corridor and Sandhills already have, but the recession has probably pushed that back, and the density just wasn't there yet. Or I could be completely wrong, though it sounds like the new operation there, Shag Bistro is thinking along similar lines, in antipation of the dining business from the Verizon call center relocation..

Added bonus, interesting clouds and sunset driving back from Spears Creek.

(Hat Tip to commenter Stewart)

UPDATE 22 February 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon. Also adding suite number to the title.

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 old-style walk-up soft-serve parlor was in Bishopville, on the north side of town near the high school stadium. I would pass by it several times a year on the way to family events, and always meant to stop some time or other, but the way it always worked out is that I was not alone, running late, or both.

I first noticed that it seemed to be closed on my way to Thanksgiving 2008, and finally got around to taking some pictures in March of 2009. It was a beautiful sunny day, and I had no qualms about heading out on I-20 with a camera and some good music. According to their sign, the place had been there more than 50 years, which I have to say is a pretyt good run.

Going by this last month for Thanksgiving, I saw that now all the signage is down, and the building is just sitting there empty with no indication of what it was.

UPDATE: Looks like there's a Facebook Group..

UPDATE 23 December 2011 -- Well, as these 24 November 2011 (Thanksgiving) pix show, the building is gone now.

UPDATE 24 December 2011 -- Oops! Building is still there, but boarded up. The pix were of a lot with a gas station destroyed by Hugo, so I've taken them out. I'll try to get the real thing next time I'm over there. (Didn't have my camera ready today..)

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.

Adriana's was a landmark Five Points coffee house that had apparently been open for 25 years. Eva in the Free Times has the story of how the end came, and it seems to have been a number of factors.

I believe that I only stopped in at Adriana's once, and got an initial "not for me" impression that I never spent enough time in Five Points to correct. As I recall, it was a hot summer day, and I was walking around the area as I do maybe once or twice a year (actually more than that now that I'm taking pictures for the blog..) and I stopped in for an iced cappuccino, which was served to me sweetened. My theory is that you should never put sugar in someone's coffee unless they ask for it (or unless you're ordering some frou-frou drink which explicitly lists it).

Be that as it may, they survived the coming of Starbucks just around the corner for a number of years, which is no mean feat. The storefront is currently empty, or was when I took these pictures a few weeks ago and I have not heard of anything new going into the space.

I had just turned out of Grecian Gardens on the adjacent block when I remembered about Gooney Birds and decided to get a few pictures. Of course that was after supper -- perhaps I'll add a day shot the next time I'm in the area and think about it.

I only ate at Gooney Birds once. I had a burger, and it was perfectly acceptable, but not something so incredibly good that I would pass dozens of other burger places to get over there. I don't recall much about the decor now, but at this remove, I'm wondering if the eponymous 'Gooney Birds' could have been The Gamecocks -- most years it seems as though it would fit well enough.

As do many buildings fitted out as restaurants, Gooney Birds has found new life as a Chinese Restaurant. (The other possibility would be a Lizards Thicket, but there was already one of those in the same parking lot :-)

UPDATE 3 Nov 2010 -- Here's a daylight picture, finally:

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: