Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This one is not a "real" closing, but I thought it was kind of odd, so I'm going to note it.

I had noticed Bruster's Real Ice Cream in a few locations before ever stopping by, and it seemed to me that there was always a crowd standing around outside for some reason. When I finally did stop by, I found that the reason is that there is no "inside", at least for customers. All the business is done through walk-up windows, even though the buildings are plenty big enough to have counters inside. The ice cream is pretty good, but certainly not noticably better than Baskin Robbins, Ben & Jerry's, Coldstone or Marble Slab, all of which operations have counters and seats inside. I can't really think of why the chain would adopt such a concept, except to "be different". It's a concept I can see working well in resort areas, but it seems ill-suited to year-round markets. If you get a hankering for ice-cream in November, are you going to go somewhere warm, or stand outside Bruster's?

I noticed a month or two ago that the store on Beltline at Forest had been dark a while, and I stopped by to see what was going on. There were signs in the windows saying that they were closed for "renovations & training" and would be open again early in 2008. Well, it is now early in 2008, and they are still closed. Since it is a brand-new building, and I have seen no work trucks at the site, the renovations angle is puzzling, and I have to wonder what kind of training the staff at this store needed that isn't needed at their other locations, especially since it was a going operation. If I were to speculate, I would say that their business model just doesn't work in the winter at non foot traffic sites. But I would never do that.

UPDATE 27 March 08: Looks like the place is for sale, but for sale as a Bruster's franchise, not as just a building:

I wish him(?) luck, but those "loyal customers" the "for sale" sign references have had half a year to find other creameries..

UPDATE 31 March 09:

Well, they backed a truck up to the place and loaded all the equipment and took down the signs. That was in January I think and so far nothing has gone in there.

UPDATE 8 June 2010 -- Well, it's going to be a Hibachi Express "soon", though it seems like the "soon" sign has been up a month or so, and there doesn't look to have been any interior work done..

UPDATE 23 Dec 20-- Hibachi Express is open:

UPDATE 30 August 2021: Updating tags, adding map icon.

Fran's was a small meat-and-three on Forest Drive almost across from Trenholm Plaza. They always appeared to me to do a good business though I only went there a few times myself. My opinion is that they tended to run out of most items very early in the evening. If you weren't there by 7pm, there was probably no point in going (seniors found it ideal..). Combining that with the fact that the layout was very crowded and that they had no booths, I decided years ago that Lizard's Thicket was preferable when I wanted down-home cooking.

The new restaurant going into the location will be called Zoes Kitchen (but with the little European dots above the "e" in "Zoes"). Looking at their web site, it appears that they are a regional chain and will be serving a "healthy" Greek-inspired menu. To be frank, I didn't see anything there that really looks appetizing to me.

UPDATE 6 Oct 2010 -- Well, Zoe's is open, and has been for a while. As I said above, the menu doesn't appeal to me in general, but the Greek salad is good (if pricey), and with the closure of Zorba's on Decker I do visit here for that every so often. The patio is nice in the spring and fall as well.

UPDATE 1 September 2022: Change date year from '08' to '2008' in title. Update tags and add map icon.

I never went inside this location of Tuesday Morning. I had never quite figured out what kind of a store it was supposed to be, except that it didn't seem like somehing I would be interested in, and was rarely open. I finally went inside the Pawleys Island location, and decided that the concept was essentially Big Lots by Martha Stewart, although it wasn't quite as bad as that sounds since there were a number of toys and odd bits of electronics I found interesting.

I don't know the exact date the Trenholm Plaza location closed. Even though I go to the Post Office around the corner almost every day, I hadn't noticed until this morning that Tuesday Morning was gone. Just to see what would happen, I called their number, and it was not disconnected (though noone answered), so I'm guessing the closing was within a month.

It will be interesting to see what goes into that location. Trenholm Plaza has done very well over the last 40 years in remaining viable while other strip malls have gone into decline almost as soon as they opened. (Look, for instance, at Midlands Plaza, which was very similar to Trenholm Plaza in its (brief) heyday).

UPDATE 23 April 2009: First, Tuesday Morning is back on Forest Drive in the old La-Z-Boy store.

And second, Rosso's Italian Restaurant is now open in the old Trenholm Plaza Tuesday Morning storefront. The menu looks promising! (and there's a nice review here)

UPDATE 2 June 2009: Added link to Rosso's review above.

UPDATE 2 Marcy 2023: Updating tags, adding map icon.

UPDATE 18 May 2023: Changing "Trenholm Plaza" to actual street address to post title.

Wally & Crumb was a small cookie bakery on Forest Drive next to the La-Z-Boy warehouse near Trenholm Plaza. I stopped by a couple of times and got some chocolate chip cookies which were perfectly OK, but I think in the end the place had four problems:

1) Location

In general, a cookie store is not a destination in and of itself. I think if they had managed to locate in Trenholm Plaza, or the plaza with Piggly-Wiggly a bit up the road, they might have gotten some foot traffic from shoppers going to other destinations.

2) Signage

The main sign for the business read "cookies FOR SALE". If you were just driving by and looked over, your first impression would be that the building was for sale.

3) Lack of Marketing

Obviously I don't know what type of marketing the owners tried to do, but with their location, it would have made sense to try to get their cookies into Starbucks, The Fresh Market, Holey Dough, Hooligans & Books-A-Million at Trenholm plaza, if possible with a little placard like "We proudly offer Columbia baked Wally & Crumb Cookies!". I don't know how much freedom managers at national chains like Starbucks have to offer local products, but certainly Hooligans or Holey Dough would not have been out of the question.

4) The Product

As I said up front, the cookies were perfectly OK, but they were "hard" cookies, like Chips-A-Hoy. I think that goes against people's expectations for a "cookie store". When people go to a cookie store, they want something they can't get from Keebler or Chips-A-Hoy: freshly baked soft cookies. The hard cookie market is adequately served by the national bakers and by making hard cookies Wally & Crumb removed a reason to stop at their store.

"Liggett's", as we called it, was in Trenholm Plaza more or less where The Fresh Market now is.

Liggett's was a Rexall drugstore, and like most drugstores, carried a good bit of general merchandise. Unlike most drugstores today, it also had a lunch counter, which, unlike Campbell's Drugstore across Forest Drive, boasted booths as well a counter seating. Before the invasion of Columbia by burger chains, Liggett's was one of the most convienient places in Forest Acres to have lunch. We didn't do it that often. I now eat out every day, but growing up, it was more like once or twice a week (almost always for Sunday lunch). I suspect we went to Liggett's when my mother was carting both of us kids around shopping. My clearest memory of eating there is the day my mother made me try ketchup, something she probably came to rue, since after that, I wanted it on everything!

Liggett's also had a now forgotten piece of equipment called a tube-tester. This was a complicated science-fiction looking console studded with tube sockets with a flip chart up above. You would look up your tube on the flip chart, put it in the correct socket, flip the indicated switches to the correct presets, let the tube "warm up" and then hit the test button. If the tube were good, a needle on the test meter would rise into the green zone. If it were bad, the needle would stay in red or amber. I was always pulling discarded radios and TVs from people's curbside trash on the assumption that I could fix them if I replaced the right tubes. There was actually something to this, but since we had several perfectly good radios and a working TV, my parents were generally not inclined to spring for buying new tubes when I found a bad one, and since my weekly allowance was $0.50, I wasn't often in a position to buy one. It was still fun testing though.

I'm a little hazy on exactly what happened to Liggett's. I have some idea that it might have been totally bought by Rexall, dropping the "Liggett's" name and then may have been bought out by Eckards, which definitely did eventually have a store in that general part of Trenholm Plaza. I think Campbell's outlasted it, and there was some sort of drugstore with a lunch counter that lasted at least into the late 80s (on Garner's Ferry), but I think all of the drugstores with lunch counters are gone from Columbia now. Am I wrong?

UPDATE 17 Nov 08: Thanks to commenter Dennis for the graphic of a tube tester. Try doing that with your Ipod!

UPDATE 14 March 2009: Added 1963 Yellow Pages ad.

UPDATE 30 April 2013: Added picture of the Rexall logo from an old sign displayed at the Antique Mall on Broad River Road.

UPDATE 11 October 2013: Here is an amazing picture of the old Trenholm Plaza, with Liggett's. Thanks to commenter Dennis for digging this up!

Bell's was approximately in the location occupied by the Rite-Aid drugstore more or less on the corner of Forest Drive and Trenholm Road. I recall it as being more beind the Gulf station (now a Union 76 mini-mart). Certainly it didn't occupy the whole property now siting Rite-Aid.

Until McDonalds came to town (the Garner's Ferry location was the first), Bell's was the only option in the area for white-bag take out burgers. Both Ligett Rexall in Trenholm Plaza and Campbell's Drugs across the street had lunch counters, but not really take out operations. As I remember, Bell's had no dining area, though there may have been a couple of picnic tables outside. I don't recall the burgers much at all, but I really enjoyed the french-fries. I remember one time thinking that they were so good that I kept taking them into the bathroom to share with my father who was in the shower. He must have thought I was crazy, but he just kept saying thanks.

For some reason, I can't recall specifically noting that Bell's had closed or that the building had been torn down. I think it had happened by the time I started First Grade. Since McDonald's was running a promotion (which it did for years) to the effect that it would give a free burger to any kid with only As & Bs on his report card, McDonalds quickly became the focus of all my burger attention, and I had a kid's indifference to Bell's fate.

UPDATE 22 May 2011: Added a couple of pictures up top to reflect more or less where I recall Bell's as being, off to the side and sort of behind the Gulf.