Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

For most of my life, this building was a Gulf Station and was our default family choice for gas and light service.

After the place closed as a Gulf, it seemed to go through several phases that I am now hazy on. In particular, I think there was a period after it was a full service station and before Circle K when it was still a gas-only station, but without service. During this period, the service bays were closed, but the car-wash bay was still in operation, and you could get a code to with each fill-up to go through the wash.

Circle K took over the place in sort of a half-hearted way. They never really committed to making the place a "modern" convenience store, and the service and wash bays remained walled off, but unconverted, forcing the convenience operation into a really small cramped space. In particular, they never put in interior bathrooms as all stores now do, and the old Gulf restrooms on the Trenholm Road side of the station remained the only ones (though they were never ADA-ed).

Though the place remained my default gas station, there were some inconvenient touches to that aspect as well. First they gradually closed off the Trenholm Road door. At first sometimes you would go and it would be open and sometimes it would be locked, then finally it was always locked. Second, they took the pump locks off the pump handles. That meant you had to hold the pump handle throughout the whole fueling operation. I think some places feel this is a safety issue, but I say that's bunk. Thirdly, from time to time, they seemed to have the slowest pumps in SC. On those days, I think if I had not pre-paid, I would have just driven off rather than wait for the gentle trickle to creep up to $20. (Of course nothing *creeps* to $20 nowdays..)

Initially when the place was a Union 76, even though the store itself was technically a Circle K, they signage played up the 76 affiliation, and the Circle K branding was almost invisible. Sometime last fall, they completely, and messily, disaffiliated from Union 76, knocking out the logo panel on their street sign, and pasting Circle K branding on the pumps (take off the pumps now that the CK is closed).

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

UPDATE 23 May 2011 -- various pictures as below:

On 17 May, it appeared that the underground tanks were being pumped dry:

On 18 May, they started digging up the underground tanks. Hopefully all those holes in the tanks were made during the excavation:

By 21 May, the tanks had been carted off:

By 22 May, the hole has been partly filled in, the pumps are off in the corner, and the next step is unclear. Knock the building down? Start an interior refit?

UPDATE 16 June 2011 -- Hmm. New sign, and it appears that the building is slated to be torn down. A ground lease is a type of lease where the tennant gets to build on the land during the lease period, and of course build-to-suit means a new building as well. Looking at the supports for the canopy on the Trenholm Road side, it appears that they have already decided that backing into things doesn't matter anymore..

UPDATE 18 July 2011 -- Well, demolition has started. Already the canopies have been knocked down. They haven't torn into the building itself as far as the walls go, but it sure doesn't look like it's long for the world:

UPDATE 19 July 2011 -- Well the end has come! Interestingly, the bathrooms were the last piece left standing. I shot some video of them knocking down part of the bathroom wall, but it didn't come out:

UPDATE 19 July 2011: The whole building is down now. Also added first pic of Circle K logo at top:

UPDATE 20 July 2011: Add 18 July 2011 photoset below.

UPDATE 21 July 2011: Today they knocked down the street sign and the trailer is gone. (No pix yet). Also I added the 19 July photoset below.

UPDATE 23 September 2011 -- Well, the place is apparently to be a Circle K again according to the new sign in the lot. And in the meantime, the old chargecard sign hangs on..

UPDATE 5 May 2012 -- It appears that new construction has finally started, or at least excavation:

UPDATE 21 May 2012 -- Landscaping and excavation continue and now they have boarded out the foundations for part of the new construction. Apparently they will be building in what was green space in the former Bell's Drive-In as well as the old Gulf/Circle K lot. At least my memory is that Gulf & Bell's sort of shared a parking lot, but that Bell's itself sat in this little strip between the gas station and the drugstore which never had a building after Bell's was torn down:

UPDATE 2 June 2012 -- The new underground tanks are going in:

UPDATE 6 June 2012 -- Looks like it's going to be a fairly small building:

UPDATE 17 August 2012 -- The new building is almost ready to open. In fact, I saw a car pull up to the "Redbox" and apparently rent a movie:

UPDATE 12 September 2012 -- The construction is finished, and the new store is open. I was conflicted as to whether I should mark the post as "open again" given that it is a completely new building, but in the end I did. If it ever closes again though, it will get a separate closing..

PHOTOSETS

Photoset 18 July 2011
Photoset 19 July 2011
Photoset 20 May 2012

UPDATE 29 March 2023: Adding map icon & updating tags.

Here's one I have absolutely no memory of, though I would have been driven past it constantly going to and from Richland Mall. The building now at 2120 Beltline (note how it was "Belt Line" in the 1976 ad..) is a medical office next door to Moe's, and is obviously not the original restaurant building.

I have no idea how the theme played out in this restaurant either. Again, as a kid, I would have expected to notice some place with a knights and castles come-on, but am still drawing a complete blank...

(You'll notice I was having a little issue with lens fogging on the first shot here).

D's Wings on Beltline had a kitchen fire on Monday 7 March 2011. In the process of trying to put it out, the fire department apparently first cut a hole in the the roof of the adjacent Little Gym and doused that establishment, before getting the right site and putting out the flames (which were mostly confined to the kitchen hood anyway). The main dining area looks untouched, and fire insurance will cover everything, including advertising for the grand re-opening.

(Hat tip to my sister)

UPDATE 26 July 2011: Commenter Andrew sends these pictures noting that D's has been open again since 11 July 2011 (and in fact I took advantage of his info by having lunch there today -- it looks pretty much the same inside as it did before the fire):

UPDATE 17 July 2012 -- Some more pictures from the re-opening:

UPDATE 5 December 2012 -- Well, it looks like this D's is closed again. I went by around 6pm and found it locked. There's no note on the door (other than "Closed" which could be a normal daily sign), but it should have been open then, and the phone is "temporarily disconnected". This place has been closed before due to an ownership transfer, and then again due to the fire -- hopefully it will be back once more. I liked to go over there every now and then when I wanted comfort food and have a grilled cheese sandwich.

UPDATE 11 December 2012: Well, it appears that this store is relocating to the old D's location at Sparkleberry Crossing.

UPDATE 3 June 2013 -- Well, whatever this is to become (and as of yet, the D's signage is still up), it is now hiring:

UPDATE 9 July 2013: Sulley's Bar & Grill is now open in this slot:

This little building sits more or less on the Northeast corner of Beltline Boulevard and Forest Drive, across from the Walgreen's. As commenter Dennis pointed out when he noted this closing, it is sort of turned backwards in that the side of the building which faces Beltline has very little signage. Given that all the parking is in the back, locating the "front" signage back there may have made sense to the designer, but it's bad for business as folks driving by on Beltline have very little way to tell what businesses are located here. In fact, I did not realize there was a Subway here for quite a while.

Any time a business, especially a restaurant, puts up a note that they are closed "temporarily", it is a very bad sign. Of course there are times when it's necessary, such as for a serious illness (which I certainly hope has not happened here), but in general once a bad situation is exacerbated by adding "no money coming in" to whatever problem existed, these temporary closings tend to become final. In fact, this happened in this very building in the case of Bruster's Real Ice Cream.

(Hat tip to commenter Dennis)

UPDATE 16 April 2011 -- Well, it did re-open. Good for them!

UPDATE 8 March 2012 -- The sign on the side facing Beltline has been replaced, but I'm hard pressed to find any differences between the new one and the old one..

UPDATE 2 March 2020 -- This has closed temporarily on several occasions since I first listed it. It is now closed for good:

UPDATE 17 June 2022: UPdating tags.

I noticed today that the bridge over Gill Creek at Eight Mile Branch behind the old Forest Lake Shopping Center (and beside the old Forest Lake Park is closed.

Google maps suggests that the road, at least on the east side of the bridge (in the area behind Zoe's) is known as Forest Lake Place, but doesn't seem to realize that it goes all the way over the creek and out to Trenholm Road. I do have to admit that it's not entirely clear to me either whether the area to the west of the creek is an actual road or just a parking lot. If it's a real road, it's pretty poorly maintained, but if it's a parking lot, why have a bridge in the first place?

At any rate, there is no indication how long the closure is to last and there did not seem to be any actual bridge work going on that I could see at all...

As I've mentioned somewhere or another on this site, the last time I ate in a cafeteria was sometime in the mid 1990s when I found myself at a "Picadilly" at Regency Mall in Augusta -- I was distinctly underwhelmed. Before that, it was probably the S&S on Gervais when my Aunt was visiting town.

Growing up, however we ate fairly frequently at Richland Mall's original cafeteria, The Redwood Cafeteria and sometimes its follow-up Morrison's.

My general opinion of cafeterias was not high. As a kid it seemed to me that they could even mess up rice & gravy -- cafeteria rice was not like "real" rice at all. Instead of sticking together properly, every grain was separate and discrete. (I suppose it was parboiled or "converted" as Uncle Ben called it ["Q: What's white and runs up your legs? A: Uncle Ben's perverted rice!"]). Furthermore, they didn't have hamburgers. My parents insisted that "hamburger steak" was the same thing, but I knew it wasn't. Still going through the line was interesting, and the little butter-pats on paper never failed to fascinate.

Upon hearing that the Richland Mall S&S was to close on Sunday (30 Jan 11), I decided I would eat lunch there one day to check it out and maybe get some pictures. Arriving at my usual lunch time of 3:00, I was a bit confused. The doors were open and people were at the tables (and, yes, they were mostly older folks, just as the stereotype goes -- that's OK, I plan to be one someday, and probably sooner than I expect). The way I expected to get to the serving line however seemed to be blocked. I saw a possible second serving line, but nobody seemed to be tending it.

An enquiry finally established that they had taken down the serving line sometime before I got there, and would not fire it up again until 4:30, and that the second line was for take-out only -- which is a shame because it looked pretty good, with black-eyed peas, and other nice vegetables, rather more Southern than I remember the old cafeterias being.

So anyway, I did not get to eat at S&S before it closed (unless I get there tomorrow or Sunday, which I consider highly unlikely), but I did get some pictures later in the week, and captured several of their billboards (the one across Forest Drive from the mall is already taken by a new advertiser now).

This will be the first time Richland Mall has had no cafeteria in it, and can't bode well for the future of the mall, but then what has lately?

UPDATE 30 Jan 2011: Added the first two pictures, take just after the doors closed.

UPDATE 7 September 2012: Added picture of the Two Notch Road billboard above.

This corner space at Trenholm Plaza was most recently occupied by The UPS Store, but when I was growing up, it was Ed Robinson's, though I probably never knew it by name.

My mother did not believe in clothes dryers, opting for a clothes-line in the back yard. This was fine most of the time, but since rain is not unknown in the Columbia area, every now and then we would be faced with a need for clothes that were not yet dry. In addition to that, in the 1960s I had the impression that our washer was something of a lemon. There were fairly frequent calls to the service man, and more than once I recall the floor covered in sudsy water.

When we needed clothes washed or dryed, there were two choices: either the laundomat by what is now city hall on Trenholm Road, or the one in Trenholm Plaza. I think that when my mother had to deal with us children, we tended to end up at Ed Robinson since she could let us "free-range" around the plaza while the clothes were cycling.

As I recall, the staffed laundry was in the east end of the building with the laundromat area being in the west end. The laundromat area was filled with tables and wheeled hampers, and smelled of soap and hot lint. As I recall, the tables were some sort of plastic, or covered with plastic and hued aqua-marine. I would sit on them, and swing my legs back and forth (this must have been before I could read, or I would have had a book). As a boy I was fascinated by mechanical devices of all sorts, and I was particularly fixated on the gas dryers which lined the west wall. Not only did they have sort of retro-spaceship-control sliders for varying the temp from "warm" to "way too hot", but they were large enough (floor to ceiling) that I could imagine actually riding in one (this was during Gemini & Apollo) with more room to spare than the astronauts had. The start (or "blast off") process was particularly satisfying as you put your quarter in a slot way at the top of the machine (I had to use a chair), turned a knob which had a very satisfying action, heard your coin drop with a cheery plink, and then got to push the starter button which wound the whole thing up.

The washers were not quite as interesting, but did have a variety of little plastic tops you could put on the agitator for reasons which escape me now, and of course you could always play "open the lid -- washer stops" / "close the lid -- washer starts" until my mother would make me stop so she would get a full wash from her quarter.

I'm not sure when the cleaner closed. I know it was still there in 1970, but think it was gone by the time I left town in 1985. As for myself, while I agree with my mother that line dried clothes are nicer than tumble-dried ones, I don't have her patience. The line is still in the back yard, but the clothes go in the Kenmore. (And for all that I tend to be a "they don't make them like that anymore" guy, I don't think I've ever had to call service on a modern washer or drier..)

The original plan for Trenholm Plaza was to tear down the whole wing, and The UPS Store moved across the way in anticipation of that, but in the event the economy collapsed and management scaled their plans back to doing a remodel instead. Most of the spaces have been re-filled, but the old Ed Robinson space is currently still empty.

UPDATE 29 November 2011 -- It's to be a Cafe Caturra:

UPDATE 7 February 2012 -- The Cafe Caturra looks about ready to open:

Well, thankfully, according to WLTX nobody was injured though $2,000,000 damage was done to the building by the fire which started in an oil heater.

This AAA Car Care Center opened rather recently, being built after a number of pre-existing buildings were taken down in May of 2008.

UPDATE 25 Dec 2010 -- More pictures from 21 Dec and 22 Dec:

UPDATE 30 Dec 2010 -- Here are some more pix from 26 Dec:

UPDATE 25 Feb 2011 -- Well, they've completely knocked down the building now (and the burned out SUV is gone..):

UPDATE 25 May 2011 -- rebuilding has started, here are some pix from 13 May 2011:

UPDATE 1 June 2011 -- Work continues in these pictures from 29 May:

UPDATE 30 August 2011 -- Nearly done:

UPDATE 20 October 2011 -- Open again:

Back in the 1970s, Shoney's was a big deal, and we ate there quite often. At the time, they were afilliated with the Big Boy chain, and they always had "Big Boy" comic books as free premiums for the kids. I can't recall any of his specific plotlines at this remove, but he (Big Boy) and his girlfriend Dolly, always had some sort of food related adventure in the front of the comic leaving the back for puzzles and mazes.

We ate most often at the Two Notch location (now vacant) but I think we did come to this one from time to time.

After dropping the Big Boy tie, Shoney's coasted pretty well for a while, then started getting into trouble and closing a lot of stores. At one point they tried to diversify by getting into hotels (Shoney's Inn) something for which apparently they didn't have the necessary skill set, and that hurt them some more.

I believe this one closed well before the Two Notch one, and has been a Lizard's Thicket for quite a number of years now.

UPDATE: Closing date changed from "1970s" to "late 1980s" based on commenter Weston's info.

UPDATE 10 September 2020: Update tags, add map icon.

I have to admit I'm drawing a blank on this building. It's on Covenant Road just below the final Forest Lake TV location, and just above the former Danielle Le Shay Gallerie. In fact, google searches on "3618 Covenant Road" turn up the Danielle Le Shay name, but that was 3620.

Anyway I'm sure I've driven past it hundreds of times since 1969 and must have seen it in operation as a number of different businesses over the years, but none of them is coming to me now. I will say that it has a cleaner-ish look to it.

UPDATE 15 Jan 2011 -- OK, I spent some time with the city directories, though I only got up to 1995 before the library closed, but here's what I have for this building:

1970 -1972 -- Powers 60 Minute Cleaners
1973 -- Boland's One Hour Martinizing
1974 -1977 -- Vacant
1978 -- The clock Doctor
1979 -- Vacant
1980 - 1981 -- Brinson's Quality Cleaners
1982 - 1984 -- Vacant
1985 -- Haywood Electrical Corp
1986 -1987 -- B C Bike Inc
1988 - 1990 -- Vacant
1991 -- Jomacies Cafeteria (hard to read my handwriting, but I think that's it)
1992 - 1995 Vacant (I did not have time to check past 1995)

I believe The Clock Doctor is still around in that little strip of trailers across from the Two Notch K Mart.

UPDATE 3 February 2021: This building and the one next door were razed in December 2020:

Also updating tags and adding map icon.