Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This distressed building, on Old Legrand Road just off of Parklane near the Farrow intersection, was obviously a store of some sort, judging from the marquee space above doors in front. It also appears to have had a really nice ceiling at one time, though no more. I considered taking a closer look at the back rooms which are visible here, but decided that was the kind of place where people who don't want company might stay. There's what appears to be a pump shed on the right side of the building, so I'm guessing this place was never on city water.

Google has a pretty good satellite view of the place:

View Larger Map

Looking at that, it appears there is another decrepit building on the same lot further back from the road.

UPDATE 14 April 2012: Commenter sugarbear1 provides one of the names for this place: Mr. B's Railroad Tavern. I have put that in the post title and have taken out the generic "Building". Also changed the "1970s" closing date to "1990s".

UPDATE 15 April 2012: Changed the closing date again to "late 2000s" based on the fantastic photos commenter Dennis dug up (check his link in the comments).

UPDATE 24 April 2012: OK, I did some research at the library. Interestingly, this location apparently never had a telephone listing, and I had to get the infromation from on "city" directories.

The first such listing is in the 1983 city directory, and gives the address (which is clearly *now* on Old Legrand Road) as 8444 Parklane Road. The listing is for

Mr. B's Railroad Tavern (Thos Hammonds)

I assume Thomas Hammonds was either the business owner or the property owner..

The last listing was in the 1991 city directory, and the 1992 directory lists the address as "vacant".

The Febuary 1993 Bellsouth directory is the first to list Mr. B's Railroad Tavern as being at 6531 Two Notch Road. The last listing was in the February 2000 directory. Here is a shot of what's currently at that location:

I'll note also, that it turns out "Mr. B's" is a pretty popular name for various places, and there were a number of other places with that prefix during the same time period. In fact, there is currently a Mr. B's at 3128 Two Notch Road just east of Beltline which appears to be a bar and venue.

This interesting little building sits on the left side of Beltline, just past Farrow if you are headed towards Forest Acres, right where those two streets with the stoplights that aren't synchronized to *anything* are.

Obviusly it wasn't orginally a liquor store, but I'm not sure what it would have been. The exaggerated 'A' frame shape suggests some type of branding, and is somewhat reminiscent of this building on Airport Boulevard, at least in the back part, but I don't know what that one was originally either.

At any rate, I noticed on a recent Saturday evening, when you would expect a liquor store to be hopping, that the lights were off and the place was deserted. It's in this year's phonebook (February 2011), but the phone has been disconnected.

UPDATE 17 October 2011: Commenter jhill supplies the name for this building's incarnation as a fast food and ice-cream restaurant, Mr. Swiss.

UPDATE 12 Marck 2012 -- Open again as OneLove Food Mart:

I'm not sure when Flowers By Rita (also know as Flowers By Rita K) closed. It is listed in the February 1997 phonebook but not the February 2007 one, so my best guess would be the early 2000s.

I am curious as to what happened to the building (which is on the north side of Farrow just east of Fontaine). Google Streetview shows the building before whatever it was, so it must have been in the last few years. Fire is the most obvious guess, but there doesn't really seem to be any charred area around the damage..

I thought I had already posted this one. I distinctly remember taking a bunch of pictures of the vacant building, but apparently I never go around to uploading them and making a post.

Anyway, this Chinese restaurant moved from its rather delapidated building up the street to 5432 Farrow Road. In the meantime, between when I took the original, missing, pictures, and when I took this one in January 2011, Pari Mini Mart & Deli has moved in. This makes (at least) two non-Chinese places with Chinese decor in town. (At least three if Grandma's hasn't changed their sign yet).

UPDATE 10 January 2012 -- A better picture of the new location:

I don't get onto Farrow Road that often, and in some cases it surprises me when I do since my mental geography for that corridor is pretty vague. It's another one of those streets that seems to have seen better days, with bygone restaurants like The Fountain Bleu Club that are fixtures in phonebooks year after year, but are now long gone.

Here's another form that era. The first ad is from the 1970 Southern Bell phonebook, but the second one from the 1985 edition is almost exactly the same, except for the change in phone number, and the ominous reduction in the number of open days from "7" to "6".

I don't know exactly when the Farrow Road Drive Inn closed, but the building is still in service as a restaurant, now operating as The Paper Moon Cafe, and is apparently going to be annexed into Columbia proper:

This annexation is part of the City’s initiative to bring in those parcels of land that are part of another jurisdiction, but are surrounded by the City of Columbia. These are known as Donut Holes. These areas pose a number of challenges to the City that can be addressed through annexation. They can often cause inefficiencies in the delivery of services due to confusion about jurisdiction. Also, if the land is in a jurisdiction with a different approach to code enforcement, these areas can negatively impact the quality of life for adjacent City residents. Such inefficiencies and the costs to taxpayers are germane to City and County property both, which results in a greater impact to City residents since they pay City and County taxes.

.....
.....

Recommend Approval. This property is commercially zoned within Richland County and is currently being utilized as a restaurant with frontage on Farrow Road. The property is contiguous to the City Limits north across I-277 with RS-3 (Single-Family Residential) zoning and east by single-family residences and offices that are zoned RS-3 and C-1 (Office and Institutional). In that the property is occupied by a restaurant which is a permitted use within the C-3 zoning classification, the C-3 zoning is appropriate at this location.

It appears that China Dragon restaurant on the corner of Farrow Road and Beltline Boulevard is gone. When I took these pictures, it was after the return date stated on the vacation sign, but the phone had not been disconnected, so I held off posting. Now the phone is cut off and when I drove by this evening, there were a couple of cars there with people who seemed to be looking at the property (though there is no "For Sale" sign).

I never ate at China Dragon but the building has been there forever, and stuck in my mind as a kid because of the rocky exterior. Since we went down that way so seldom, I had a poor mental model in my mind of exactly where it was, and would always be surprised when I saw it again.

The building design is clearly the same as this much restauranted building on Decker Boulevard, so going by the comments there, it was probably originally a Popeye's Chicken.

Read the rest of this entry »