Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I don't go down Plumbers Road(*) often. I've been to the travel plaza a few times, which is like stepping into the 70s again, and I've done a couple of closings there, but it has a few things you wouldn't expect to find, like a church and hotel along with the industrial building like this.

According to their site Speedy Pak was founded in Myrtle Beach in 1970 and and provides "expedited deliveries", "white glove service", and "in home deliveries". If google can be believed, they have moved from this I-20 frontage north a block to 201 Mcleod Road.

(*) Anyone know why it's called that?

I actually went to take some pictures of this place a couple of years ago after driving past it one day and seeing absolutely no cars in the lot. In the event, it turned out to actually still be open at that time, if apparently having a very slow week. I wondered when I saw comenter badger's heads-up if that would be the case this time or not, but they are actually closed this time.

The sign on the lobby door (which you cannot actually read in the picture here) says that they are temporarily closed for renovations. The general state of the lot suggests that it is yet early in that process, and that it was indeed needed.

(Hat tip to comment badger)

UPDATE 11 October 2017 -- Now reflagged as Gallus Stadium Park Inn:

I just noticed that this print shop on Two Notch by the old Mayo's Suit City was vacant. They list in this year's phonebook, so I'm going to 2016 on the date.

The name caught my eye because when I first started work, we had a bunch of Imagen printers on our network and would deploy them to various clients. The engines were 300dpi Canon behemoths that would keep working through flood, fire or the zombie apocalypse. It was the same engine, in fact, that Apple used shortly thereafter for the first LaserWriter. The engine however, sat on top of a cpu box with a 5.25 floppy that booted the printer operating system and provided Imagen's page description language: Impress. After the LaserWriter came out, suddenly Diablo 630 daisy-wheel emulation wasn't enough, and we spent a lot of time and effort trying to make those sunk-cost Impress printers work like Apple PostScript..

As you can see, it was raining pretty hard, so I did not get very good pictures, but I noticed the For Sale sign on this office building a few weeks ago when I was in the Owens Field area. That's right, Columbia has *two* roads named "Airport Boulevard", something I did not know.

From what I can gather National Distributing Co is a wine wholesaler, which left this building around 2010 for a site off of Bluff Road. They no longer seem to be listed in the phonebook, so I believe they left the Columbia market after that, though they are still in business nationally.

Note the City Roots greenhouse (or whatever you call it, since it is not enclosed) to the right -- I didn't realize this was where they are located.

I was driving Taylor towards Huger the other week and noticed a real-estate sign in front of this nice brick warehouse building. My pix are not great, and the place definitely looks better on the Wright Johnston site. I'm not totally sure if this is a closing or a move, but given that that site has not been updated with any new location, I'm pretty sure it's the former. According to the history there, Wright Johnston started as a general men's clothing store in 1937 but later switched to focusing on public safety uniforms only.

This LoopNet listing suggests that the building went on the market in April.

I didn't know the South Carolina Association of Counties was a thing, but it is, and apparently they have moved from this Fernandina Road location to 1919 Thurmond Mall, near Richland Street.

Capitol City Insurance whose marquee you can almost see on the building and whose name the LoopNet listing puts to the building, seems to have moved north up Fernandina to the other side of Piney Grove to 1 Fernandina Court.

I could be wrong, and perhaps this place will re-open as tax season rolls around, but right now, it looks pretty defunct, with the furnishings completely stripped, a real-estate key caddy on the front door and abandoned televisions piled on the front stoop. The only ambiguity is that the marquee has not been taken down..

UPDATE 11 October 2018 -- This place is now a hand car wash:

I noticed this weekend that sign and wrap store Image 360 is no longer in their Northeast location in Tillman's Plaza. Actually, I don't ever recall seeing the storefront before open or not, but then I've not been in the market for any signs.

They appear to have moved to 6904 North Main Street.

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Ride Solutions was the follow-on operation (after the building was vacant for a good while) to Dentsville Auto Upholstery. I'm not exactly sure what Ride Solutions was -- it sounds like a used car dealer, but I don't recall ever seeing many cars out front, so perhaps it was a garage. At any rate, I noticed the other day that it is closed, and judging from the grass growth, seems to have been for a while.

UPDATE 6 October 2016 -- Here are some shots I just dug up of the place in operation: