Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here's another Columbia Mall closing. This is the first time I've been in the mall since Tumbleweeds and it actually felt a little livelier this time though I still see about the same number of shuttered shops. I guess this one, apparently a custom gift and embroidery shop, will be one more.

(Hat tip to commenter Dustin)

This building, on a Columbia Mall outparcel facing Two Notch Road, was built as a Don Pablo's Mexican restaurant. By the time I did a closing for Don Pablo's, in March of 2008, the building had been a Charleston Crab House (they list in the phonebook as "Charleston Crabhouse" for some reason) for a couple of years already.

Like lobsters and shrimp, I consider crabs "sea bugs" and don't want anything to do with them so I never checked the place out. I do know that they used to have another Columbia store somewhere out by Columbiana Mall and they still have three locations in the Charleston area. Interestingly The State quoted the owners in a story about business taxes back in Jan 2011:

Charleston Crab House owner John Keener is fuming.

“We’re getting taxed on future growth of our business,” said Keener, whose three Lowcountry restaurants employ about 220 workers during the busiest time of year.

Keener said the tax increase, which will cost him more than $4,000 this year, caught him off guard. He warned his colleagues of the increase in an e-mail blast he sent out earlier this week.

That text suggests that the Columbia store was already closed on 15 Jan 2011, so I am putting the closing date as "late 2010". At any rate I don't think it could have been too long given the equipment still inside the place.
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Well, that didn't last too long, unfortunately. Gabby's replaced the former Cici's Pizza sometime in the summer of 2010, and according to the legal papers now posted on the door must have closed before 5 Jan 2011.

I never made it to Gabby's but I was hoping that with its launch, the city was at up-one after CiCi's moved to North Main. In the event however, it seems that the net effect is that the city used tax dollars to lure Cici's to a subsidized location and left privately owned Fashion Place in the lurch (and undercut the city's own Decker Corridor efforts).

National Tire & Battery (now a Tire Kingdom) was in this Columbia Mall outbuilding more or less behind the old Penny's location. I actually did go there once a few years ago when my car started really thinking about things before turning the starter over. I usually put Die Hards in my cars but for some reason or another I was not able to get served by Sears that day. I'm not building up to anything here -- it was perfectly acceptable service and a battery that lasted several years. (I've actually had much worse luck with alternators than batteries anyway). I guess I would have been hosed if I had needed to take advantage of the battery warranty as they closed fairly shortly thereafter, but in the event it wasn't an issue.

I don't believe the building was vacant long at all as Tire Kingdom moved in shortly thereafter. I find it a little amusing that this large, freestanding building has only a suite number, while all the little suites at The Shoppes at Meeting Place have full street numbers.

I've written about this building before since it was once "that building that looks like a car radio" and make the "Sounds Real Good!" commercial.

I'm not sure if Cash-N-Dash was the immediate next tenant in the building after Continental Sound, but I think they were. Sadly, they un-radioized the building though you can still see signs of the old design (the stars were the knobs, and the windows were the radio tuner readouts, I think).

I'm not exactly sure when this place closed shop, but I'm pretty sure they dashed sometime this summer.

Joyner's (as we called it) was a place my mother liked to visit every now and then. That's because you never had any idea what they might have in stock (and probably they didn't either!). They listed under Surplus & Salvage, and that pretty much describes the place.

It wasn't quite the same concept as Big Lots because while everything at Big Lots may be overstocked or something that no sane person would want, Joyner's specialized in beat up stuff that may have been fine items in themselves but couldn't be sold as new. Or that was a lot of it anyway, though I do specifically recall buying some bottles of Rodenberry's Cane Patch syrup there (a memory from growing up, which it was a favorite of my grandfather, who put it on biscuits) that didn't seem damaged.

Commenter Dennis described the store this way:

The place closed not too long after I left town in 1985, last listing in the Feb 87-88 phonebook. The space now seems to be some sort of transmission and towing operation.

Unique Lighting Center has been on O'Neil Court, just down from Parklane and beside the former NAPA store for a number of years. I actually had occasion to go in there about a year ago. I was looking for a replacement bulb-clasp shade. I had looked unsuccessfuly in a number of non-specialty locations with no luck, but they actually had one here. I figured that eventually I would go back to see if they could replace the globe in an old mogul-base floor-lamp I have, but that's yet another task I didn't get around to soon enough.

UPDATE 16 Oct 2010 -- They are definitely closed now. The banners are still up, but the door signs say "Store Closed" & "Out of Business":

I'm not sure exactly when this store, in Dentsville across from Columbia mall, and near the Two Notch / Decker intersection closed, but it is still listed in this years phonebook.

The motto, "Furniture, flooring and more" seems rather ambitious for what is a pretty small storefront. They must have had a warehouse somewhere to support everything shown here in this archived version of their website from 2008. This area of Two Notch is still struggling. I'd like to see something go in there, but I have to say that since there's no light, it's not well situated for traffic heading towards town.

UPDATE 28 Sep 2010: Added "Color Tile" to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 22 March 2011 -- It's now a "Cheapo" grocery:

I only went into Superpetz a few times. I'm pretty sure I got pigs ears for my sister's dogs there once, and think I was in there one other time, though I can't remember what for. The place was kind of a Wal Mart for pet paraphernalia, with the non-WalMart touch that you could actually take your pets inside with you.

According to the chain's web site, this was the only Columbia store, which makes me suspect issues with the chain as a whole rather than the standard "things don't do well on Decker" issue. This closing is a further blow to the Fashion Place plaza which housed Superpetz, although it did recently make good the Cici's Pizza vacancy with the opening of Gabby's Pizza in that spot.

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

UPDATE 8 Oct 2010: Added Phar-Mor to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 10 September 2011 -- It appears that Goodwill will be moving across the plaza from its current location in back to this location:

I went to Sears at Columbia Mall on Wednesday to look for something and decided to take the closing-cam and walk the mall afterwards. There are so many vacant storefronts that the place almost feels like Inlet Square Mall now. I thought about taking pictures, but then decided there was no point because I didn't even know what these places had been. In high school, I probably went several times a week, but now it's once every six months or so. Is the mall in trouble? Let me put it to you this way -- the Dollar Store is gone, and there are kiosks selling flea-market type merchandise...

I did take a few pictures, and I really like the first one. It is almost an Edward Hopper-esque scene of isolation.