Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I've written about Pizza Inn before, and since we lived in Forest Acres, that Two Notch store is where I would encounter the chain while I was in Columbia. For a while in the 1980s and 1990s, I lived in Fayetteville NC, and our office would often do a general lunch at the one near the main mall there as well. This one, on 12th Street in West Columbia is one I never ate at, and sometime in the early 2000s, I think, the building was knocked down and re-built as a Pitt Stop gas station.

With the passing of this place, and of Pizza Hut on Knox Abbot Drive, I think that Tony's on Knox Abbot is about the only pizza option left in West Columbia / Cayce.

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:

The bakery which was the first tenant I can recall in the Triangle Rent-a-Car building must have set some sort of record for opened and closed. I barely had time to notice that it was there, and then it wasn't. I think the concept was sort of Atlanta / Panera but with a drive-through. From this Richland County delinquent tax spreadsheet for 2004, which lists the business entity as Buns Spring Valley LLC, I'm guessing that the place was probably called Buns, though I can specifically remember that.

I don't know why they didn't make it, but my own theory, based on seeing the place but yet not stopping, is that the location was too hard to get too to make an attractive drive-through combined with the fact that the strip mall it's in is not really a "destination", and the fact of it's having a drive-through kind of devalued it if you were in the mood for a Panera type sit-down experience.

UPDATE 5 May 2009: Consensus in the comments is that this place was also a Schlotzsky's deli at one time, so I have added that to the post title.

UPDATE 7 Sep 2010: Got the correct name for "Buns" and updated the post title with Panino Bakery and Cafe. Also added Hardee's -- see the comments!

UPDATE 19 June 2021: Adding tags and map icon.

This non-descript outbuilding in the ill-fated strip mall which now houses mainly The Comedy House was the first "mailbox" operation I ever saw outside of the Post Office. I don't think it was actually called The Mailbox Store, but that was the gist. The idea was fairly simple, but new (at least to the Columbia market): The store would provide a unified reception service for all your mail and packages. This differed from the service you get with a Post Office P.O. Box in that you in addition to "mail", you could also have UPS and other services deliver packages to the address, and a representative would sign for them in your stead. (Nowadays, UPS will just leave stuff on my porch, but I think they used to be more strict). I guess the main appeal was to on-the-go small businessmen who couldn't always stay in one place to receive important packages, and didn't have the staff to detail for it. I had their brochure at one time, but never actually went in the store -- I imagine they also did shipping and packing.

I'm not sure what happened to this outfit. I think the niche is viable, it's amongst the services the UPS Store offers today, but for whatever reason, I think they folded after a couple of years. I believe there was another operation in the storefront before the Army recruiting office that now occupies it set up shop, but I can't recall what it was.

UPDATE 4 May 2009: It appears from the comments that this place was a Holly Farms chicken restaurant before the mailbox place, so I have updated the post title accordingly. Apparently Tyson bought out Holly Farms in 1989 -- up until then, there was a NASCAR event called The Holly Farms 400 and after that it was called The Tyson Holly Farms 400 (though according to wikipedia that is now also defunct). I am sure however that this Holly Farms was gone before 1989 because I can remember the mailbox place from when I was in college.

UPDATE 5 May 2009: The consensus in the comments is that the mail service was The Mailbox Etc, so I have changed the post title from Mailbox Store to reflect that.

UPDATE 21 May 2009: Turns out there is still a sign for the (long departed) store on the Decker side of the strip, so I have added a picture of it above.

Well, I'm on the road, so posting may be erratic the next few days, but I thought this one was interesting. I think I've been off of most of the I-26 exits between Columbia and Charleston at one time or another, but I don't think I'd ever taken exit 165/Bowman until today. Actually that's probably because there isn't really anything there, at least going west, except one rather lower-tier gas station / convenience store -- and a honking big open lot across the street that was obviously a Shell / Blimpie / truck stop at one time in the recent past.

I didn't really expect to be able to find out anything about it, but Google is a strange and wonderful bird, and searching "I-26" "exit 165" Blimpie immediately pulled up the going-out-of-business auction info for the place:

Going Out of Business Auction
10:00 AM May 17, 2008
Rain or Shine

Bowman Shell - Food Mart
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS AUCTION
Selling contents of business. Property has been sold.
This sale will be a combination of restaurant equipment plus (Blimpie Sub Shop Equipment), and gas pumps, diesel pumps, walk-in coolers, canopies, signs, a pickup, and many other items.
Inspection-May 16, 2008 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM and on the Day of Sale from 8 a.m. until Sale Time

Interesting that Property has been sold, but almost a year on, there's still nothing happening with it.

This Quincy's, which now houses a Maurice's Barbeque, was I think the first in town to close. The way I recall it, and I'm very often wrong about anything involving dates or time, this one went first, the one on Forest Drive went second, and the one on Two Notch went last.

This Quincy's was on the far side of town from us, and I think I only ate here once, when we were coming back from the airport -- it was fine. I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to check out a surviving Quincy's in Florence at US-52 & I-95. It was not as nice as I recall the Two Notch store being in the beginning, but it was perfectly acceptable.

This real estate report says this building was built in 1986 -- I would have guessed a bit earlier than that. I was first aware of it when it was a Garcia's Mexican restaurant. I'm pretty sure that this was the spot anyway, though the facade was different (the real estate link says the place was remodelled in 1996..). As I think I've written somewhere, Columbia has a hard time getting and / or keeping "national" Mexican chains. We never had a Rio Bravo, Chevvy's, Chi-Chi's or On The Border, and we lost Garcia's and Don Pablo's. El Chico seems to be the only one that sticks. To be fair though, I think the whole Garcia's chain has fallen on hard times, and they closed their Myrtle Beach location several years ago.

After Garcia's the place became Roadhouse Grill which was sort of a Western place like (but not as good as) The Texas Roadhouse on Two Notch, but that didn't last long either. After that I think the building was empty for several years until it's most recent incarnation as a Bingo hall.

UPDATE 13 May 2010: Just for grins, here's the old Garcia's building in the Kroger plaza off of US-17 in North Myrtle Beach:

In the 1990s, the restaurant chain Krystal started to make a push in to the Southeast. They had been around for a good while by then, but were new to the Columbia market. I think that originally their niche had been as the Whitecastle-like store operating in regions where there was no Whitecastle, and they had a small burger similar to Whitecastle's "slider".

However during their big expansion push, they came up with the selling point that they had menu items not usually found at fast food joints. I think these were mostly vegetables, but the only actuall one I can recall right now is "fried mushrooms", because I like fried mushrooms. (The State Fair is usually the only time I get them though). Anyway, they did a big build-out and opened lots of new stores, but for whatever reason, it didn't work out for them, and the stores all closed. I'm pretty sure the chain is still around, but they've exited Columbia, and I believe the whole state. I only went to Krystal a few times and never to this store. I'm pretty sure that this particular location was a "mini" store with drive-through and takeout only.

I don't know anything about Autogym. I don't recall hearing the name anywhere else, so I'm assuming that it was a one-off local carwash operation, and I don't think it lasted too long. I'm not sure why you would bring your car to a building not fitted out with carwash equipment, especially when there was a carwash, built as a carwash, just across Two Notch on Decker, and perhaps that was a problem for them.

UPDATE 27 April 2009:

Well, it appears I was mistaken when I tagged this building as a former Krystal. I've changed the post title to reflect that, but I'm going to leave all the verbiage I wrote about Krystal since the comments won't make sense otherwise -- I reserve the right to cut-and-paste it into a post about a real Krystal sometime!

Commenter Badger identifies the initial tenant as a Rally's. I never ate at (or got takeout from) a Rally's, but it seems to me that sometime in the early 90s, the idea for a very small takeout burger place took off, and suddenly there were about half a dozen different chains working the concept. There were Rally and Checker as mentioned in the comments, but there was also Central Park, and several others that I am completely blanking on right now. In general they didn't last long though I'm not sure why -- personally I hate to do take-out but plenty of people seem to like it.

UPDATE 12 September 2009: Well, it's open again, this time as a Chinese take-out operation, China Garden.

it seems to me that that Leesburg Road used to be more fashionable than it is now. Perhaps since I-77 came through, it's a bit harder to get to, and to describe how to get to. Or it could just be my imagination, since we didn't go there much even back in the day.

In fact, I have only a very vague memory of having heard about Dick's Flamingo Club at all. If I hadn't seen the ad while I was xeroxing the "restaurants" section from the 1970 phonebook, I'm sure I wouldn't ever have thought of it again. I do notice that it was open until 11pm on weeknights, and it seems to me that more restaurants were open late in 1970 than are today. Nowdays, if you can't get there before 10, or even 9 in a lot of cases, you are pretty well hosed.

The property is currently occupied by Parklane Seafood House whose sign proclaims that they are celebrating their 30th anniversary, having started in 1978. Of course, I think they actually were on Parklane then, so I'm not sure the 1978 date was the actual closure year for Dick's.

UPDATE 5 October 2021: Adding map icon.

In my mind, Hardee's has been going down hill since they got rid of Gilbert Giddyup & Speedy McGreedy, not to mention "charco" grilling. For years though, the real reason to stop at a Hardee's when you got off the Interstate rather than McDonalds or Burger King, was for the ice.

There are a number of different types of commercial ice makers for restaurants. Some make lenticular spherical sections, others make partially hollow cubes, and some make "chewy" ice. Honestly, I don't know why a restaurant would want anything but the last kind, but some do and did. Hardee's though could be counted on for the chewy ice for years and then in a fit of madness, they gave it up. Next they started emphasing chicken such that I couldn't even go into the stores any more because of the chicken smell. Finally they were bought out by Carl's Junior wandered aimlessly for years but of late seem to have grabbed onto a workable concept with the "thickburger" line (though I have yet to sample one).

Anyway, that's all besides the point to this pair of local playground changes sent in by commenter Melanie. The "before" shots come from her, and I took the "after" ones last weekend:

The tall metal man was the playground at the Hardees beside Dutch Square before they tore it down. I think this picture was taken 1995 give or take a year.

and:

Hardees ditched another of their coolest playgrounds sometime in the new millenia. Here is a pic taken in 1995-6 of the Hardees playground from Garners Ferry where I77 goes over. They had this playground at least since I was born because I remember it always being there.

The metal man is indeed way cool. I can only speculate that either the insurance became too burdensome, or playgrounds don't really fit in with the Carl's Junior conception of Hardee's.

UPDATE 21 April 2009: Added "Dutch Square" to the post title.

UPDATE 18 December 2012: Changed the location for the "Garners Ferry" Hardees from 7942 Garners Ferry Road to 120 Veterans Road. (The Hardee's in question is not actually on Garners Ferry, but a side-street, and the Garners Ferry Address is another Hardee's entirely).

UPDATE 10 April 2019 -- This location has now closed, the closing is here. Also updated tags and added map icon.