Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here, next to Rudy's Upper Deck in The Shoppes At Meeting Place is another of Columbia's many defunct personal finance storefronts. Of course, in these times, it helps to be too big to fail..

There's an old joke that goes back as far, probably as the invention of the telephone, and it goes something like this:

1: "Hello, Burkett, Burkett & Burkett"
2: "Yes, I'd like to speak to Mr. Burkett."
1: "Sorry, he's out to lunch right now."
2: "Well, then, I'd like to speak to Mr. Burkett."
1: "I'm afraid he's in a meeting right now."
2: "Ok. Then please let me speak with Mr. Burkett."
1: "Speaking!"

And I'm sure all of the Burketts have heard that one many times by now..

All that aside, the firm has recently relocated from this building on the East side of Sunset Boulevard next to the gas station and Auto Spa. The LoopNet listing says it was built in 1980, and I can believe that. I'm not quite sure when the move was, though I posit 2010 as a guess, but it's been long enough for the shrubbery to grow a bit, and a few limbs to fall in the parking lot.

I was rather surprised when I drove back in there to find that there is no cut-through to Fairlane Drive and the stoplight there, which would make southbound access easier. Google maps suggests there is a stream paralleling Fairlane which separates this lot from that street. I'm guessing it would be behind the storage shed.

Burkett, Burkett & Burkett have moved to an impressive new building just a bit North and on the other side of the street at 3101 Sunset Boulevard:

I never really got into baseball trading cards and memorabilia (though they intersect somewhat with the comics book world). I just remember how Charley Brown always wanted, and never got a Joe Shlabotnik trading card (though Lucy could find them at will).

Rudy's was in The Shoppes At Meeting Place, a little strip not too far west of Sunset, which has had a number of comings and goings over the years, most notably for me, Ye Olde Comic Shoppe.

(Hat tip to commenter steve)

San Jose is probably the biggest local Mexican chain (though they don't all have the same ownership), and one I like pretty well. I never made it to this smaller location on Sunset not far from the zoo, and in fact am pretty sure I did not know that it was there. Commenter MB notes that it wasn't there too long. I have to say Sunset Center has a good-looking ice cream cone on their sign!

(Hat tip to commenter MB)

Commenter MB points out that this maternity consignment shop in the "Office Suites" strip at 1055 Sunset Boulevard (across from the Brookland Baptist Church,site of the former Sub Cabin) has closed though their web site is still up for now.

(Hat tip to commenter MB, obviously)

Well, I admit I'm drawing a blank here. This building is in the 1200 block of D Avenue in Triangle City (just a bit up and across from the old Goodyear location. Whatever it was, it is, as you can see now, pretty thoroughly gutted.

When I took these pictures, I thought it would be easy to identify when I got home. In the event though, there appears not to be a street number on the building, and my fallback of finding the Grubb & Ellis listing for it, which I thought would be easy given their big sign, fails as well. Google Streetview shows two business storefronts in it, but won't zoom close enough to read the marquees and won't give the right street number. Anyone know? I'll update below and in the post title when I get more information..

UPDATE 20 July 2011:

OK! With help from the comments this building is identified as Fogle's Food City and Furniture Farm. The actuall address of the building is 1212 D Avenue, which is a higher number than I had thought. This LoopNet listing also makes clear that the building is much larger than I had thought with what must have been the main parking lot facing 12th Street. I will have to go back and take pictures of the 12th Street and C Avenue sides of the building.

The Secretary of State's office says that Fogle's Food City, Inc. was incorporated on 2 January 1970 and dissolved on 21 June 1996. Of course it's possible that the actual grocery started before that as a sole proprietorship or some other form of organization. It's also possible that it closed before the corporation was actually dissolved. At any rate, Furniture Farm ("Where Prices Are Born.. Not Raised") was already listed in the February 1997 phonebook. I'm not sure when it closed as my home phonebooks jump from Feb 97 to Feb 07, but it was not listed as of February 2007.

I've changed the post title from "Building" to reflect this information, and have fixed the street address as well. Thanks folks!

UPDATE 17 October 2011: Added Shumpert's to the post title based on info from commenter Becky Dodson.

UPDATE 5 April 2012 -- The place continues to deteriorate and has now been officially condemned. You can see that the roof is completely gone in spots and that the whole place has been flooded during the recent rains (it's a bad sign when your building leaks to the outside rather than the outside leaking into your building..). I also finally got some shots of the other side with the old Furniture Farm signage:

UPDATE 22 April 2012 -- Well, looks like that's it for this building!

UPDATE 7 May 2012 -- All gone:

I have to say that the mascots for AAA Automotive are a pretty rough looking bunch. The middle one reminds me of a buffed up version of the boss elf from Rudolph, the one that didn't want Herbie to be a dentist.

I see various versions of the Goodyear name when googling this Triangle City address at the corner of 12th Street & D Avenue in West Columbia including the version I used, Goodyear Auto Service Center, as well as Goodyear Tire & Rubber and Goodyear Gemini Auto Care. Mr. Shine seems to have been a carwash operation, and during either the Goodyear or AAA days the place apparently rented U-Haul trailers as well.

It appears that the building was on the market at one point, but LoopNet says that's no longer the case, and indeed the real-estate sign out front offers to lease rather than sell.

(Hat tip to commenter tonkatoy)

In a companion closing to yesterday's, commenter Andrew sends these before (8 April 2011) and after (15 April 2011) pictures of the Blockbuster on Emanuel Church Road, saying:

This is located in West Columbia at the intersection of Emmanuel Church & Old Barnwell Road. The Street address is 2916B Emmanuel Church Road. It is in a shopping center called Sandy Ridge Square, anchored by Bi-Lo.

Thank you, Andrew. I confess that I had to plug the address into google maps and then zoom out twice before I had any idea of where Emanuel Church Road was.

(Andrew offers a hat tip to commenter Thomas for the heads-up)

UPDATE 5 October 2020: Change post address to "2926 Emanuel Church Road Suite B" from "2916-B Emanuel Church Road" for consistency. Update tags, add map icon.

This small nursery was on The Charleston Highway before it joins up with Knox Abbott Drive. These pictures are from mid September, and the going out of business sign is already up, but it seems to me that activity continued there for several more months -- I had some later pictures, but I can't put my hands on them right now.

The few times I've wanted to buy some plants, the first thing that always occurs to me is the garden department at Lowe's or Home Depot, and I suspect those big-box operations have really hurt these independent operations.

UPDATE 13 July 2012 -- Here's a few more pictures of the place I just found hiding on my drive:

As is the case with most non-national Mexican restaurants, Don Pedro was not the first restaurant operation in this building. To me it has sort of a Howard Johnson look to it, but I could be wrong. At any rate, the building is sited at, though not affiliated with, the Travellers Inn motel at the intersection of Airport Boulevard and I-26. I never made it to Don Pedro since I figured it would be about the same as a number of closer Mexican establishments. (Though the Free Times link below associates it with the Don Pedro on Two Notch which was supposed to be quite good).

I give 2006 as the closing date since it showed up in the Free Times Bites & Sights guide for 2006, but apparently no other year, and was not in the Feb 2007 phonebook.