Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

There's been a lot of speculation in Have Your Say lately as to whether Branham's Exxon at the corner of Devine & Ott is open or not.

I think the answer is probably: It's open, but it's not Branham's. Commenter Nobody saw a sign there to the effect that it was closing 24 March 2012 after 35 years, but when I drove by, I saw the station open and with people actively filling their cars. A closer inspection on a later Sunday trip reveals that the streetside sign now says:

Gas Pumps Open
Thank You
Keenan Oil Co

while the other sign of the sign says that the "shop" (which could be the convenience portion, the auto bay portion, or both) is temporarily closed.

It appears that the station has been sold to Keenan which is, for the nonce at least, running it as a gas-only station. I certainly wish the owners a nice retirement, but it's sad to see another of the very few "mechanic on duty" stations left close. In fact, the only other one that comes to mind right now is Null's Exxon on Two Notch.

UPDATE 5 February 2013: It's now a Gaz-bah:

United Car Sales was a small used car lot on Forest Drive just east of Four J's Plaza, next to Ambassador Animal Hospital. As reported by commenters Andrew & Matt, the place was torn down last month, and has since been confirmed as the second location for Cookout hamburger restaurant in Columbia. At first it seemed sort of an odd location choice to me, but then I remembered that Forest Drive is an Interstate exit now. Cookout advertises their Orangeburg location with I-26 billboards, and will presumably advertise this spot with billboards on I-77.

I'm not sure what The Toy Box was, but it's the other google hit for 5311 Forest Drive. I don't think it was an actual "toy" store however as I probably would have heard of that.

(Hat tips to commenters Matt & Andrew)

UPDATE 4 April 2012 -- Changed post title to add "moved" as the status for United based on commenter R H Lancaster's info. Cook Out construction continues:

UPDATE 16 April 2012 -- Here is United's new home on Garners Ferry Road at I-77 (as far as I can tell, they have been listed in the past as both "United Auto" and "United Car"):

UPDATE 30 June 2012 -- As these pictures from 20 May and 21 June 2012 show, they are progressing and scheduled to be open on 1 July 2012:

UPDATE 3 July 2012 -- Cookout is open!

There are some adjectives that I never know what to make of when they are used in advertising or business names. Certified is one such. Are they certifying that the objects on their lot are indeed cars? It's sort of like those dodgy collectible items with a "certificate of authenticity" as if that couldn't be faked as well as the item.

At any rate, Certified Cars Online, Inc. seems to have been the last tenant in this apparently revolving-door lot on Sunset Boulevard between I-20 and Target. The one review I see for Sunset Tattoos indicates that it was in business as of 2008, and I'm guessing the other car operations before Certified came after that. (It's possible that some of them (Enterprise for instance) were run concurrently with Certified).

Here's an archived copy of the Certified site on the Internet Wayback Machine.

It appears the closing note could be taken as a confession of sorts, though I doubt that's how it was meant..

UPDATE 18 July 2013 I'm guessing that when I listed Enterprise Rent-A-Car in the post title above, I had googled the address and had that come up as one of the hits. As it turns out, that was something still in the future for this site at the time. Now Enterprise has made the move from 5184 Sunset, and is in operation on this lot now:

Read the rest of this entry »

This former car lot and storage building outlet is on Garners Ferry Road in Hopkins adjacent to the old Sister Rose/Wateree Arms building. I'm not sure when the car lot closed, but Best Built Barns is in the February 2010 -- February 2011 phonebook, but not the next one, so I'm saying it probably closed in 2010. Certainly it was looking a bit overgrown in mid July 2011 when I took these pictures.

Commenter Alaska Jill sends in these pictures of Gibbes, saying:

Gibbes Machinery: The sunlit pictures were taken, I believe, in 1998. I used to park at the Gibbes lot as a USC student and knew those buildings were probably not going to be around much longer. Demolition started not long after those photos were taken. One morning in early 1999, we had snow in Columbia. I was a graduate assistant at the journalism school at the time, and had brought my camera with me to get some pictures of Columbia in the snow. From the steps of the Coliseum, I caught a couple pictures of the demolition in progress. An additional picture is taken from the former Gibbes lot.

The old Gibbes space is directly across Blossom Street from the Coliseum -- I'll have to consult some old directories to get the actual address. Right now it's the location of USC's new-ish "wellness center", which frankly sounds like a boondoggle with no educational function to me, but back in the day, Gibbes was there as a representative of the old "manufacturing" look of the Vista area. I never had a clear idea of what the machinery side of the business did, but the car lot was the only Volkswagen dealer in the Columbia area.

After USC got this property, the dealership moved to Broad River Road, just west of the river and either went under or sold out to the current tenant, Wray Mazda Volkswagen.

Take a good look at the second picture above. In the background, you can see The Towers and also the mini-mall building (muraled "Gamecock Clothing") which once held Robo's video arcade, Pappy's and a number of other small, student-oriented businesses. It has since been torn down to put in the Adesso condos.

UPDATE 17 December 2011: The building I tag as the "mini-mall" was actually Addams University Bookstore a separate building in the same general area. See the comments.

(Hat tip to Alaska Jill)

Given my disinclination to do anything before noon, buildings on the west side of the road are always a problem in pictures on this site, and these taken-against-the-sun shots of the location of the old Cycle Center and newer Rent-N-Roll are no exception.

There is a remedy in this case, so far at least: the LoopNet listing for this building has better lit pictures of both the cycle and auto incarnations of the spot and the still extant Rent-N-Roll site has a 100 picture slideshow of automotive candy sitting in front of the building.

The new tenant seems to be in now, and the place is a tobacco, beer and package store called Kings.

(Hat tip to commenter Jonathan)

Well, I have to say that the web site for this place is certainly an interesting attempt at persuading someone to make a major purchase! I'll bet anyone surfing for a car from work had a moment of boss fear..

I'll also note that in Computer Science, something is "virtual" if it appears to be there but actually is not, which I guess is a good metaphor for the current state of this car lot on the East side of Broad River Road not too far from Videos & Beyond.

This AAA Car Care Center was at the Village At Sandhill on the Bi-Lo side of the stores. I notice that they say they are moving to 4526 Forest Drive, but I think it would be more accurate to say "consolidating", since as far as I know, this place was open along with Forest Drive, until Forest Drive burned down so the end result when Forest Drive re-opens will still be one location where there were originally two. (The sign from the daytime set of pix is more clear).

According to their still extant web site, Auto Trim Design was founded in 1973 and introduced auto window tinting to Columbia in 1983 (As I recall, there was a legal problem with window tinting before then).

Interestingly, Google StreetView shows them with a different paint job, so the current "rising sun" look must be fairly recent. It's definitely a little more eye-catching.

UPDATE 20 September 2011: Commenter Tom points out that the building was a Texaco, which I was able to confirm from the 1961 Yellow Pages.