Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Commenter Badger noted the closing of this Save A Lot, which I had not noticed. If I remember correctly, this store was originally in Landmark square.

When the Harden Street Save A Lot closed recently, one of the articles about that noted that 10 other Save A Lot stores had closed in December of 2018. Perhaps this was one of them.

For the store not really having been here for that long, the label-scar is quite distinct.

(Hat tip to commenter Badger)

I guess the writing was on the wall after this Staples cut their hours way back recently.

This was probably the Staples I went to most often over the years (with the Devine Street location a close second). In general it seemed to be a well stocked and run store, and I picked up my share of printer paper, hard drives, computer media, headphones, ethernet hubs, pens, post-its and other office and computer paraphernalia. The only knock on it I can think of is one that seems to be general to Staples as a whole: It always seems to take a bit longer to check out than it should.

Although they have posted a closing sign, there is not a sale going on, and the various "inventory" tags inside the store make me think they will be relocating the merchandise to other stores rather than doing a clearance.

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

Rocket Fizz is a franchaised soda & candy operation that to some extent puts me in the mind of The Candy Cottage at The Hammock Shops and a place that used to be on Centre Street in Fernandina Beach (which, gradually over the course of several years, transitioned into an all things Celtic shop..).

The place opened in August of 2018, and here is an article republished from Coladaily about the opening, with lots of nice pictures which make me think it would have been more at home on Market or King Streets in Charleston..

As far as I can tell with all the newest reviews being dated "seven months ago", the place seems to have closed in January 2019. I suspect that there wasn't a lot of Winter foot traffic, which may have factored in.

(Hat tip to commenter Payne)

I'm not sure how much USC still uses "textbooks" in the old sense. I haven't discussed it with anyone now in college, but my impression is that a lot of the books now are in ebook form. Since it sounds like the South Carolina Book Store is really getting out of the textbook market, that may be what happened.

At any rate, when I was in college this place was a sure visit every semester. In those, pre-internet, days this store and the USC owned textbook concession in the Russell House had a duopoly lock on the student book market. I usually tried to get all my bokos on campus, but invaribly there were one or two that were sold out and had to be tracked down here. They would also buy back textbooks, and from time to time growing up, my father would take me here with boxes of books that he had been sent in the hopes he would choose them for his classes, and would sell them, giving the proceeds to my sister and me. (I think he felt it wouldn't be quite right to take the money himself).

Aside from the texts, this place also had a heady mix of pencils, pens, notebooks, art supplies and drafting paper. There was a certain very specific smell when you walked in from all the paper and pencils. If I recall correctly, I had to get all my drafting supplies for my all-time least favorite class: Introduction To Engineering Drafting (or some similar name). I had a compass, gum erasers, drafting pencils, drafting paper and straight-edge. All of that, and after trying all day, I still could not draw a bolt in 3D perspective.

Despite driving past this store many times since college, I don't think I have been in since the 1980s, and I now it's too late to see if it still smelled the same..

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

I noticed yesterday when I took the pictures for the J. Peters post, that 2005 North Beltline is also the new location for Wild Birds Unlimited. I first noticed them when they moved from 3304 Forest Drive to this location in the Forest Park shopping center (If they still call it that) around 2010.

Now, they have moved on again, and this is the new storefront:

UPDATE 22 June 2022: Updating tags.

This place caught my eyes many years ago for an odd reason: The name Impress.

As it happens, I worked for many years with a brand of laser printer called Imagen (since bought out by QMS). We had many of these printers from a former contract, and used to deploy them on new contracts wherever a laser printer was wanted. Unfortunately, the printers did not support HP PCL or Adobe PostScript, they only supported their own proprietary page description language called.. IMPRESS, which very little software supported. In practice, we mostly had to use them in daisy-wheel printer emulation mode.

None of which has anything to do with this store, of course. As I said, it has been here for quite a while and is now running a final clearance sale, so if you need some prom formal wear, or a bridesmaid dress, now might be the time to go looking.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

Value City Furniture has relocated from The Meeting Place (formerly Capitol Centre) behind Columbia Mall and has opened in the old Toys 'R' Us in Harbison.

I believe this whole complex is now owned by The Meeting Place church, so I don't know if they will seek another retail tenant, or use the building for church functions. I did not see any indication that it was for sale or lease.

Just as a note, there seems to be some confusion on whether the road around the mall is Columbia Mall Boulevard or Columbia Mall Road. Google maps uses "Road".

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

I have used Young's several times, perhaps most notably for service on my father's venerable Toro, but also to get some keys cut after Home Depot botched them. They are an old-school place where there's a bit of everything.

As reported by commenter Matt, the owner is now retiring, and they are running a closing sale.

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

UPDATE 16 July 2019: The State says that the final auction day is 17 August 2019, so I have changed the closing date in the post title to reflect that. They also say the lot will become a Circle K.

UPDATE 18 November 2019 -- As mentioned in the comments, this building has been razed:

UPDATE 7 February 2020 -- Construction is ongoing:

UPDATE 14 May 2020 -- The Circle K on this spot is now open:

When commenter Brad mentioned

Circle K/BP at the corner of Old Cherokee and 378 in Lexington is permanently closed.

I had a hard time finding it because as far as I could tell from Google Maps, Old Cherokee Road didn't intersect with 378. I resolved to just keep my eyes open the next time I was out in Lexington, and did see the store as shown in the pictures above (not very good as I was going the wrong way and was too late to turn in).

Anyway, for whatever reason, unless you zoom way in, Google identifies this stretch of Old Cherokee only as State Rd S32-485, though it has no problem with correctly labeling stretches of the road to the west.

As for Circle K, they have been razing and updating a lot of their stores recently. We'll see if this one gets the same treatment.

(Hat tip to commenter Brad)

I was rather surprised by this closing, although East Forest Plaza has certainly had its share of turnover lately. The chain is pitching this as a relocation as noted in this press release, with the new location being at 2209 West Dekalb Street in Camden. I guess the management team could have relocated intact, but surely for the rank and file, those jobs are gone -- nobody is going to commute from Columbia to Camden.

(Hat tip to commenter Rashaad)