Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Before the Burger King was built, this lot, on Trenholm Road near Dent Middle School was once a go-kart track. It was a pretty loud and noisy business for a rather staid street, and you have to wonder how Arcadia Lakes and the other businesses in the area felt about it. On the other hand, I can't actually ever remember seeing any of the cars in motion. They were there for a number of years, and must have had customers, but I can only recall driving by and seeing the track and karts, not hearing anything or seeing any races in progress..

I wouldn't have minded going myself, but at the tme, I was perpetually broke, and while riding the karts would have been fun, picking up the latest Perry Rhodan space opera at Capitol Newsstand was a lot higher on my expense priority list.

After the go-kart track closed, the main building was used for another several years as a "Pet Vac" center. I always assumed that to be "pet vaccination", but I suppose it could have been for hoovering up dusty cats instead -- I never went in to see either way.

After the Burger King was built, it closed down for a long time due to a dispute between the local franchise owner and Burger King Corporate. In fact, all Columbia area BKs were shut down during that time, and some of them never came back.

I don't know when this Burger King went under, but it may have never come back from that time in the 90s when the local franchisee (who owned all the Columbia BKs) got in a dispute with corporate and all Columbia Burger Kings closed. Eventually new ownership was found and a number of them came back (with special commercials featuring "Blues Doctor" Drink Small..), but several never did.

I'm not sure when the follow-on business: TitleMax/CheckMax closed, but I believe it was this year.

I find it rather interesting that the street number displayed on the building is clearly 1402, but google is adamant that the real number is 1400.

I was rather surprised when I learned in the 90s, that all of the Burger King restaurants in Columbia were run by the same franchisee. I know Columbia is not a huge city, but it's not tiny, and I just assumed that a chain like Burger King would have a number of local franchisees. Of course, the only reason I know this at all is because the local franchisee had a complete falling out with the Burger King corporation itself during the 1990s. I don't remember the details now, and I'm sure there was a lot of finger pointing on both sides, but the upshot was that all the Burger King restaurants in Columbia ended up being shut down -- all of them, and for a long time. It was kind of an unprecedented situation in my experience.

It didn't matter much to me becase a) I was living out of town at the time, and b) I was increasingly disenchanted with fast food places at the time (this was before outfits like Moe's and Five Guys made fast food fun again) and especially with Burger King. Nonetheless, it was odd to drive past all the Burger Kings and see them stitting empty. This particular Burger King was on College Street between Main and Sumter Streets right by Cool Beans coffee shop. I had eaten there a number of times over the years, and they always seemed to do a good business with the college crowd.

Eventually, corporate found new franchisees for most of the BKs in Columbia, and made an event of the general re-opening, even getting South Carolina's "Blues Doctor", Drink Small to cut some celeberatory commercials. By then though, the University had already bought the USC BK, and it never reopened. The building has since been razed, and the land is now yet another offical USC parking lot.

Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce!

UPDATE 22 March 2010: Added full street address to post title.