Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I don't eat at Lizard's Thicket that often, but it's good Southern comfort food. I recall working in Kansas for about a month once, and being so glad when I got back, drove out of the airport here and saw the Liz on Airport Boulevard. There are times when only field-peas-over-rice will do.

Someone described Lizard's Thicket here in the comments of some post or another as a "hermit crab restaurant", ie: one that likes to let another restaurant build the building and fail and then moves into the empty shell. It strikes me as a sound strategy, but that being the case, I can't speak to what was in this building before Liz. This particular store was a bit unusual in that it was one of the two Lizes closest together of all those I am aware of (the other is just a mile or so down Two Notch towards Spring Valley). It was also the closest Liz to our house, and the one we went to most often. I remember two things in particular about it. First, they had a pot-plant by the register which was connected to a lamp. Through some sort of capacitance effect, if you touched the leaves of the plant, the lamp would turn on, cycle through dim, normal and bright and then off again. Second, once when we were eating there, the waitress subtracted the cost of our drinks from the bill rather than adding it. I've had days like that..

The building sat empty for a bit after Liz left (to go down to a new location [and building!] near Sandhill) and then the current tenant moved in. From the amount of time it was taking, and the car I often saw parked there, my impression was that the new owner was doing most of the work him(?)-self. I think too, that when it first opened, the "Korean" rubric had not been added. I haven't eaten there, but it seems to draw a good lunch crowd. I doubt there's peas-over-rice though.

Woodhill Mall was another of Columbia's hard luck malls. There were three of them which fell on hard times more or less together: Decker Mall, Bush River Mall and Woodhill Mall. Decker and Bush River were obviously "sister" malls, with similar designs, and both anchored by a Kroger on one end and a Richway on the other.

Woodhill had a different design and store mix though it did include a Richway as well. If I recall correctly, the layout of Woodhill Mall was basically a 'T' shape. If you stood on Garners Ferry road and looked down onto the mall, the 'T' would be laid on its side rotated 90-degrees, such that the crossbar would be perpendicular to Garners Ferry, and the "leg" would extend out to the left.

The anchor store at the top (nearest to Garners Ferry) of the crossbar was Tapp's, a local stalwart which was headquartered downtown, but which also had large stores at Dutch Square and Woodhill (and a small Tapp's Twig store at Trenholm Plaza). Continuing down the crossbar, were a number of stores that I can't recall, but also a book store, and a record store.

Where the crossbar hit the leg, there was a mini food court. I'm pretty sure there was a Chik-Fil-A there, and a small sandwich & burger shop which made The State's list of best burgers in town in the late 1980s. (I want to say it was called "Jonathans", but I'm not sure). If you continued down the leg towards Richway there was a video arcade, though it was never as good as some of the others in town.

It's hard to say exactly why these things happen, but for some reason, Woodhill Mall always failed to thrive. I suppose the closing of Tapp's was a big blow, but it was clear for years that the place was going downhill -- it was never unsafe or anything like that, but stores would close and not be replaced, or be replaced by one-off local stores which had no reasonable hope of surviving.

One thing that the mall did have going for it, for some reason, was it's Santa. Apparently a good number of people considered him superior to the other mall Santa's, for reasons which escape me now, but while that's nice, it's not enough to save a mall. At some point, the managers decided to embrace whatever would bring in a few dollars, and the whole back side of the mall was converted from retail to "self storage". They also opened a major recycling center behind the mall.

In the end, the only thing the mall had going for it was the remaining anchor (Richway which converted to Gold Star which converted to Target), and that wasn't enough.

I think it was early in the 2000s when I was in town and decided to take some old magazines and papers from my father's to recycle. I drove out to Woodhill Mall and found it totally gone! I was shocked, but not on reflection surprised.

Since then, the property has been redeveloped into an two upscale strips. The Target (it came back) strip apparently called just Woodhill, and a strip at the top of the old mall parking lot (against Garners Ferry) called The Shoppes at Woodhill.

I believe at this point, only the building with Hampton Hill and the old automated post office are left from the buildings of the original mall complex.

I'm not sure I can ever remember Guignard Bricks actually being in operation, but the circular kilns of the defunct brickworks have been a Cayce landmark all of my life.

I was interested then when I noticed the the land around the old works is being cleared, and that new roads are being driven into it, so I parked across the street and hiked in. It was late afternoon, and the light angling in from the west made for perfect picture taking. I've made myself jetison most of the shots, but there are still an awful lot after the jump.

I'm sure the yard was much more extensive during operation, but what is left is a row of the domed, circular brick kilns, the tram tracks connecting them, and across a brick (presumably Guignard brick) plaza, an operations building of some sort (also presumably of Guignard bricks). The work permit on the building indicates that all the work is for an expansion of the adjacent condos, and I'm hopeful that they will be mindful of the history of the place and leave these old structures in place for the residents to enjoy.

All of the kilns except one are empty, but the exception seems to have an awfully lot of odd items in it. I'd particularly like to know the story behind the scooter that figures prominently in several shots!

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For a caveman appetite

Honestly I have no memory of this place at all, and I was quite surprised to find it as I went through the 1970 Bellsouth restaurant section. I like cartoons more than most, and it seems to me that something like this would have been near the top of my radar when I was 9. I was certainly aware of Yogi Bear's Honey Fried Chicken even though I didn't like chicken at all. That's certainly an official Hanna-Barbera rendition of Fred on the ad, not some chintzy knock-off, so I assume that this must have been part of a chain that could negotiate for national level properties...

I rather doubt though, that the current 532 Knox Abbot Drive is the building where Flintstones was. The ad namechecks "Ravenwood Shopping Center", which I have no memory of, and this building, though it looks like it could go back as far as the 70s is obviously not a restaurant location.

Yabba Dabba Do!

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.

OK, this one is very vague. Hopefully someone will recall more details than this, but at one time this lot (now housing an ATM drive-through) on "B" Avenue in Triangle City West Columbia (up the hill from Zesto) had a WWII-surplus Quonset Hut standing on it.

We only went there a couple of times that I can recall since few of my mother's shopping destinations were in the area (perhaps we had gone to The Factory Outlet on 12th Street..), but the place was some sort of surplus store with all kinds of junk. It was sort of a combination of Big Lots and The Dollar Store, but it was definitely a local, one-off, operation. I have the feeling that it may have been un-airconditioned, with noisy fans running in the rear, but I might be mixing that up with some of the used-furniture stores we used to go to. To the best of my recollection, we never bought anything there, but it was definitely an interesting experience to go through the stock.

Anybody else remember this place?

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.