Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I never really associated Kenny Rogers with food (well, except maybe "four hungry children & a crop in the field"..), but according to my sister, the chicken at his Kenny Rogers Roasters restaurants was excellent. And, in fact, from what I can tell from this Wikipedia article, there was a Seinfeld episode based around that fact.

The article is quite vague about what happened to the chain. At one point they were doing well, having just bought out a troublesome competitor and gone public with over 1000 restaurants, and a few sentences later they are in Chapter 11. Today, apparently almost all the stores are in Asia.

The Chapter 11 came in 1998, but the Harbison store was already a Bojangles at that point, so I'm just leaving the closing date as mid 1990s.

You've got to know when to fold 'em..

I first knew this place as Al Amir.

After that closed, a bar called Stingers set up shop, and I totally missed the fact that it had closed until *its* follow-on operation, Marinoni's had also closed.

Actually it may not be strictly accurate to say that Stingers closed. According to this Free Times story, the same owner ran both restaurants, so it's more accurate to say that Stingers transitioned into Marinoni's. Unfortunately, I never got to either, and I have to say the pizza described in The Free Times sounds really good.

IrmoJeff had a bit more to say about Stingers here.

(Hat tips to commenters IrmoJeff & Jonathan)

Last year, a work friend of mine and her husband were driving from DC to Florida with a sidetrip to Clemson, and would be coming through Columbia on I-26. She suggested we meet for lunch, and wanting to give her a fairly straight shot off of and onto the Interstate, I suggested Al Amir on Saint Andrews road with Harbison as the connector.

"You can't miss it," I told them, "the restaurant is kind of below street level, but just go to the strip mall with the coffee kiosk in the front of the parking lot!"

The punchline is, of course, that when I got out there to meet them, I saw the kisok was gone, and they confirmed when they finally got there that they had had a Dickens of a time with my directions, and that point in particular...

Now, the kiosk, or another similar one under the name of Loveland Coffee, is coming back.

I may well buy a cup there -- but I don't think I'll include it in my directions!

Video:

I think taking the time and trouble to program a Thank You message into the roadside message board was a nice touch.

This storefront (which looks to me as though it may once have been a grocery) on Saint Andrews Road north of Lake Murray Boulevard was the first location for the Carolina Wings & Rib House chain. I'm not sure what the "Smokehouse" marquee signifies exactly -- I don't believe I have noticed that at other Carolina Wings locations.

(Hat tip to commenter jonathan)

UPDATE 8 September 2012: Label the video (first image).

UPDATE 20 April 2020: Add tags and map icon.

This little storefront on Saint Andrews Road more or less across from the big industrial plant was in the used software business, presumably mostly games as the text of the (now painted over) marquee is: Software Seconds New & Used Video Games.

Like Labrasca's it has been reported closed before, but this time is definitely the real thing. They are listed in the February 2012 phonebook, so for lack of any better information, I'm just giving the date as 2012.

I don't know about console games, but pretty much anything that runs on a PC platform is pirated out the wazoo on the Internet now, and that puts stores like this one in the same fix as CD stores (and, increasingly, video stores).

UPDATE 27 August 2012 -- The store has moved to 6903 Saint Andrews Road on the other side of Harbison and is still in business.

I confess I had not known about Happy Frog Gelato Cafe until commenter Eddie mentioned that it had closed. I'm guessing that that probably happened at the end of May, but the place has already been comprehensively stripped. In fact, I couldn't make out which unit in the strip mall had been Happy Frog without walking from one end to the other and looking at the interior setups. In the event it turned out to be the leftmost unit on the main row of storefronts.

The walk was rather instructive as it appears that most of the units in this strip have never been occupied by anything, and are awaiting interior finishing touches specific to whoever finally moves in. Given that the Food Lion anchoring the development has been open since 2008, this seems a bit disappointing (though the Food Lion itself is very nice and seems busy).

(Hat tip to commenter Eddie)

Carolina MoneySaver (or Carolina Money$aver) if I'm recalling right was one of those little "only classifieds" papers you would find around town in various lobbies and foyers. I think I saw it most often at Constan Carwash on Gervais.

The Internet has not been kind to such publications (or to the classified section of "regular" newspapers). In fact it has basically wiped them out. Why would you pay to place an ad in such a paper when you know that few people would see the paper itself, much less leaf through all the ads when you could instead list on Craigslist for free knowing that people could use online-search to beeline to your listing?

The URL on the roadside sign still works, but now redirects to a Charlotte area MoneySaver niche on the PennySaver USA site. I believe that PennySaver was once sort of an umbrella for all those little regional ad papers, but now it seems to have more of a pure online focus.

Maybe someone should put this real estate listing on Craigslist..

UPDATE 7 January 2012: Added several new tenants to the post title. I believe Fresh Encounters LLC to be the oldest of those. The Secretary of State's office indicates that it organized in 1998 and dissolved in 2001. There's no actual indication of what it was. With that name, it could be anthing from an escort agency to a produce stand.

The other names are more clear, and Beds Plus is undoubtedly the mattress store referenced in the comments.

Here's another vacancy at The Shops At Columbiana Crossing. This one seems to have happened in 2009, and as far as I can tell, Sosi did not move elsewhere.

I find it a little curious that this strip does not seem to update either the storefront marquees or their road-side sign...

Today's closing comes from commenter IrmoJeff who says:

Hey Ted…Junior Apprentice Closing Spotter, 2nd Class IrmoJeff checking in :D

I thought i’d toss this out there, in case you are ever out towards Irmo/Balentine again. 8027 Broad River Road is the address of a little triangular piece of land that sits at the intersection of Broad River Road and Woodrow Street, sort of just behind where Tez’ used to be. I drove by there the other day, and it looks like whatever business was in there most recently is closed up. I became aware of the building when i was just out of high school in the early 90’s when a friend of a friend opened Smokey Joe’s BBQ. Im not sure what was there previously, but i dont think Smokey Joes was the original occupant. The owner used to joke that he couldnt afford to charge me a flat rate for the all you could eat buffet, that he would have to weigh me going in and coming out :). Anyway after Smokey Joes closed, it was a catering business (or possibly a restaurant) for a while, run by the Catering By Dupre guy i’m pretty sure. I’m also pretty sure Dupre was somehow involved in Smokey Joes, possibly a silent moneyman or something. After that i lost track, but a quick Googling found all these businesses associated with 8027 BRR:

Bill Hinson Auto Sales
Clayton’s Cars
Irmo Properties
Palmetto Glass
Columbia Credit Corp (listed as 8025 BRR)

Im also pretty sure i remember a flower shop, or maybe a gift shop there at one point. I also thought i remembered a car title place there at one point, but i could possibly be confusing it with the Columbia Credit Corp.

I added this pic to clarify which building i was talking about

http://i54.tinypic.com/23izbyu.jpg

I actually did take some pictures of this place in April of 2009 (I know from the date of some other pix from the same day) but appear to have deleted them somehow. As I had no idea what the place had been, I didn't keep good track of them.. I'm pretty sure however that the roof of the building was intact at the time or it would have stayed in my mind. Likewise, the picture that IrmoJeff links above shows the roof intact (but has no EXIF date tag). Given that the roof is currently not intact, I suspect that the incoming Hickory Point convenience store will knock the building down, or at least it doesn't make sense to me to leave a building you hope to salvage open to the rain.

As to the two addresses: The lefthand door is labelled "8025" while the righthand door is labelled "8027". I don't have a guess which address goes with the existing outbuildings.

(Hat tip to IrmoJeff, obviously)

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Commenter Heath noted this closing, saying:

An obscure one for you… a take-out place in Irmo in Friarsgate Plaza (7949 Broad River Road) called Joe’s to Goes (not a type-o) closed in the fall of 2010. They had great burgers, fries, and BBQ sandwiches. We loved to get burgers on Sunday night during football season between the end of the 4:15 game and start of SNF at 8:15.

When I went out to Friarsgate Plaza a while ago, it wasn't absolutely clear to me which space was Joe's, but given that Mudbone's seems to be still in grand-opening phase, and that there's a vacancy next to it, I figure odds are pretty good it was one of these slots.

Personally, I'm not big on take-out because part of the whole "restaurant" idea, for me at least, is to get out of the house for a while..

(Hat tip to commenter Heath).