Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I wrote about the closing of Capitol Newsstand on Main Street. That was always the flagship and the final store to go, but at one time Capitol had three other branches that I know of. There was another one downtown on the south side of one of the streets parallelling Taylor Street, there was one in Dentsville on O'Neil Court, and this one, now Aladdin on Saint Andrews Road. I may have the order wrong, but I think this one closed after the second downtown store and before O'Neil Court.

I didn't get to Saint Andrews Road that often, but on my few visits to this store, I got the impression that the selection of magazines was smaller, even discounting the foreign language ones the Main Street location had, and that the timely appearance of new paperbacks was less reliable. That could just be an artifact of my irregular observations though. I'm not sure why the store closed, certainly parking and panhandling were not the issues they were on Main Street. I suspect however, that with the opening of Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble on Harbison Boulevard, the market this store served dropped markedly.

UPDATE 21 November 2020: Added full street address to post title and put the name Saint Andrews Newsstand in parentheses as it seems to have been the name used on the plaza marquee. I changed the closing date from "1990s" to "Late 1990s" as I found a listing in the 1998 phonebook. Also updated tags and added a map icon.

I'm not a big fan of chicken -- in fact, the smell of it puts me off a restaurant. I'm also not a big fan of breakfast. Well, that's not true exactly; it's more that I'm not a big fan of waking up early enough to have time for breakfast. I like bacon, eggs, grits and biscuits as well as anyone. So on those rare occasions when everything comes together and I'm on the move -- Bojangles makes a very good sausage biscuit!

Perhaps not enough other people think so though as this Bojangles location on Saint Andrews Road near the dollar cinemas has been gone for a while now. I'm not sure what the story on the property is. The for-sale (reduced!) sign suggests that it has been unsuccessfully on the market for a while, but I can't figure out why anyone would be doing work on the building in that case as seems to be happening.

UPDATE 7 October 2009: Looks like the building will be The Delhi Palace Indian restaurant. I'm not sure if that means The Delhi Palace will be moving from The Economy Inn on Broad River Road, or if this will be a second location.

UPDATE 10 November 2009: Add street address to post title.

UPDATE 23 February 2024: Adding map icon and updating tags.

This is yet another of the many restaurants in Columbia that I always intend to go to "someday" but in the event don't make it before they close. The Hilltop Restaurant building has been a landmark for as long as I can remember, though I think it has gone through several different names and incarnations over the years. It seems to me that there was one in particular that used to do a lot of advertising on WIS radio in the late 60s and early 70s, but I can't bring the name to mind right now (and may be mistaken since I had no clear idea of the geography of the Saint Andrews area in those days).

From the way the parking lot and signage is configured, it appears that Hilltop had some association with the adjacent Econo Lodge (which used to be something different also).

UPDATE 10 March 2011: Updated closing date and street address based on commenter Andrew's research.

Thanks to commenter "O'Reilly" who reminded me of Hilltop and pointed out a lot of other restaurants on St. Andrews on which I'll do some future closings.

UPDATE 2 January 2012: As noted in the comments, this place has been torn down:

UPDATE 25 January 2022 -- There is now a QT gas station being built on the Hilltop site:

(Also adding map icon and updating tags)

D's is a local (I believe) chain of casual restaurants with an unusually large menu. They have a little something for everyone, and are the only restaurants in Columbia (that I know of) which fry their own potato chips ("raw fries" they call them). They have a number of locations; I can think of Clemson Road, Parkland Plaza, and Beltline Blvd. They now have one less.

This particular building on St. Andrews Road appears to have a restaurant curse attached to it, as I have seen a number of operations go into it over the years, and none of them have lasted very long. More prosaically, it may just be that while it is easy to exit I-26 to eat there, it is difficult to get back on the Interstate because a left turn out of the parking lot is almost impossible when traffic is moderate or heavy.

UPDATE 24 Feb 2010: Added a bunch of previous names to the post title based on the comments. Also see here (Baja's Southwestern Grill) and here (Delmonico Diner) for the next two operations in this building.

UPDATE 31 Jan 2011: Added the full street address to the post title, finally.