Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This lot, across from Trenholm Plaza and originally behind Bell's Drive-In and the Gulf station was once a plant nursery. I think I went there with my mother a few times, but I believe she favored another place, perhaps out on Two Notch. I can't really recall much about the place, even the name. And though it's hard to believe with all the building activity in this part of Forest Acres now, I do remember that after the Nursery closed, the lot sat vacant and overgrown (with some of the nursery infrastructure still there) for many years. Fairly recently, within the last ten years, I would say, it has become a dental plaza.

This triangular lot across from the old Kroger Sav-On was once the site of the coldest IHOP in Columbia.

There are, to my knowledge, now three IHOPs in Columbia: One on Two Notch Road in the Home Depot parking lot, one downtown on the corner of Assembly & Senate Streets and one on Saint Andrews Road near I-26. I believe the St. Andrews and Two Notch stores are affiliated while the downtown store is under seperate management. I don't know if the Divine Street store was connected with any of the others, but if it had been, I'd guess downtown because it was a similar, old-style, IHOP building, while both of the other two are more "modern" and characterless. I can't recall if it were a 24-hour store as the downtown one is though.

Anyway, pancakes are comfort food, and every now and then I get in the mood for them as do and did the rest of my family, especially my father. I believe it was he who proposed a trip to IHOP one weekend for lunch, and we ended up at the Divine Street location. Now, when I say this place was cold inside, I'm not talking a little chilly. After a few minutes we had to fetch sweaters in from the car (it was not a cold day), and even that did not help. We asked to be moved to another table, not under a vent, and that didn't help either. My sister and I were uncomfortable, but my father who had always been cold natured and more so as he got on in years could barely handle his utensils. We made it through lunch somehow, and put the restaurant on the "boycott" list. I believe my sister later told me that she had been back with friends and it was just as cold then too. It was just very odd, and I can't believe we were the only diners who decided not to go back. You expect a place serving comfort food to be, well, cozy.

Sometime after that, Walgreens brought the property, tore down the IHOP building and put up a 24 Hour drugstore -- I've been several times, and it's quite comfortable!

Lorick Road is off of Folk Road, which is off of Wilson Boulevard, which is what North Main Street becomes as it nears I-20. As I was riding out that way early last month with my sister & niece on our way to a "Country Farm Adventure", I noticed Ray Lever's Bar-B-Q (or possibly just Lever's BBQ, depending on if you believe the roof or the front door placard) sitting abandoned off of the road.

It struck me as a very "barbecue" location -- off in the middle of nowhere (sorry Blythewood!), and at that first drive-by, I wasn't even completely sure it was closed. Barbecue places tend to have odd open days and to be as a rule, rather delapidated. (There's a place in the DC area whose slogan is "The Best Barbecue You'll Ever Eat In A Building That Hasn't Already Been Condemned"). When I drove back out there and got out though, it was apparent that the place was genuinely defunct. The name was vaguely familiar, so I did a bit of googling and found that the place is very fondly remembered by a good number of people though the owner got himself in some serious legal trouble before the final closure of the place. Lever's son reports that the family recipies have been passed on to Southern Pig BBQ also in the Blythewood area.

UPDATE 15 May 2017 -- As mentioned in the comments, this place has now been razed:

Here's another now empty store-front in Intersection Center. In this case, the business is still around and appears to have a nicer, free-standing facility now.

According to their sign, they've been moved for almost two years at this point, and I believe Intersection Center itself has been on the market for at least that long. I'm sure that wanting to present a more upscale image than a run-down strip mall allowed was a big factor in the move, but I wonder if they also expected that the place would sell and be demolished long before now. I'm a little surprised it hasn't, but I guess nobody is going to bet on redeveloping a struggling retail corridor in this economic climate. The few places still hanging on there are probably safe until the buildings are actually condemned.

Wonder how the Yard Sale turned out?

UPDATE 21 July 2011 -- Here are the school's new digs off Sunset Boulevard:

For a while, the Dentsville area had two big-box toy stores as well as a couple of smaller storefronts inside Columbia mall. I can't remember the name of the first of the big ones to go, but it was in the same little plaza on Decker Boulevard and Trenholm Road Extension that Winn Dixie was in and that The Comedy House is in now. As I recall, the closing caused a lot of brouhaha and local ill-will because the place timed their closing to be after Christmas shopping and before Christmas returns. It seems to me there was another way in which they did customers dirty in addition to that, but the details escape me at this remove.

At any rate, you might have expected that with the entire "destination toy store" market in the area now ceded to it, Toys 'R' Us would have prospered and have had some incentive to stay put, but that proved not to be the case. Since I wasn't really a toy shopper at the time, I didn't pay much attention to where the store went. I just figured it had joined the general flight from Dentsville and the Decker Corridor to somewhere down Two Notch. However, doing a quick online Yellow Pages search, the only location I see in the Columbia area is near Columbiana Center. I know I'm certainly not driving out there for toys -- not when there's Amazon.

The building has never had another tenant since Toys 'R' Us departed. It appears to be in fairly good shape (some minor tagging, but only on glass) though the architecture now looks a little dated. Unfortunately, with the upcoming closing of Dillards, I can't see that any first tier replacement will be willing to locate at Columbia Mall any time soon.

Update 27 Jan 2010: Well something is happening at the old Toys 'R' Us building. From the work going on, it would appear that something will be going in there:

UPDATE 1 April 2010 -- Looks like the Virginia College Career Center is ready to open:

UPDATE 13 February 2021: Changing "Columbia Mall outparcel" in the post title to the full street address, updating tags and adding map icon.

The Steak 'n Egg Kitchen was in this building on the bank of Gills Creek across the street from Trenholm Plaza and in front of Forest Lake Park. Commenter Lisa B's parents ran the restaurant (and another in Cayce), and she has an interesting rememberance here.

What I remember about the place is that it had a counter fitted with round, floor-mounted, stools on which a kid could twirl for as long as a parent could stand it and unpadded booths, like at the Waffle House or Huddle House lining the outside walls. I don't remember much about the menu, though I think it inclined towards hearty breakfast and lunch fare, but I do remember one item in particular. We didn't get to go there often (and in fact generally ate only one meal a week 'out'), but when we did, I had to have "Black Bottom Pie". I don't remember what was inside the chocolate cracker crust, but whatever it was, it was good! I think it's rather interesting that with the Steak 'n Egg Kitchen, there were at least three lunch counter operations in this block of Forest Drive. The other two were Liggett's Drugstore (later Ligget Rexall) at Trenholm Plaza and Campbell's Drug Store at the other end of Forest Lake Shopping Center. All three are gone now..

I'm not sure how long the Steak 'n Egg Kitchen lasted, but I'm pretty sure it was gone by the time I started college in 1980, and think it was in fact several years before that. This article from 1987 says that the chain still had 130 units then, but that it was troubled and that the new owners were attempting a turnaround. I don't find a corporate web site, so I'm guessing it didn't work. Anyway, after Steak 'n Egg Kitchen closed, another restaurant set up shop briefly in the building (which was remodelled). I can't recall the name of the place, but I got the impression that it was family run, and it had home-made raw fries. I think there was a non-retail business after that, perhaps an insurance office or some such and then the current tenants arrived and split the building. I've bought brandy & rum for cooking from the liquor store, but I don't know anything about the other two outfits. At any rate, none of them have Black Bottom Pie..

UPDATE 30 Jan 09:

Here's the old Harden Street location (mentioned in the comments). It's now El Burrito.

UPDATE 14 July 2012: Added the full street address for the Forest Drive location, and added the "Dobbs House" name to the post title. Also added some tags.

UPDATE 11 October 2013: Here is a great picture of one of the incarnations of this location. Thanks to commenter Dennis for ferreting this out!

I've written about The Record Bar, Budget Tapes & Records, and Coconuts Music. School Kids is yet another record store that isn't around anymore.

As I recall it, the Harden Street location was in the same block and on the same side of the road as the old Eckerds and that hot-dog place that used to be at the corner of Harden and Greene. I can only definitely remember going there once, while I was living on campus in the early 80s. In those days, I had very little money given that I had no job and was on the "ticket book" plan for meals, so my usual destination when I would go record shopping was Papa Jazz used store, and after that, Peaches. I can only recall School Kids in kind of a negatively-defined way. I just remember thinking something like Hey, this place isn't as good as Peaches. It was certainly a smaller store than peaches, I remember that for sure. As for the other, who knows what I would think nowdays? My tastes have certainly expanded, and the store must have had something to keep it going a block from Peaches. (Although I suppose in the end, neither chain did..)

I see from the Yellow Pages ad that there was also a Main Street location. I don't believe I ever visited that one. Mapquest says it's in the first block of Main, near and on the same side of the street as the old Capitol Restaurant. I'm a little fuzzy on what's in that block now, but it wouldn't surprise me if the building were gone. At any rate School Kids has long since graduated from this vale of tears.

In a comment on a previous post commenter "Jonathan" identified this building on Two Notch Road across from Columbia Mall as Continental Sound. If not for that, I probably would just think of it as "that radio building".

The place is now some sort of loan operation called Cash -n- Dash and has been remodeled, so you can't tell it now, but at one time the whole front of this building was designed to look like a dashboard radio/cassette player. What is now the left star was then the volume knob, while the right star was the tuning knob. I believe the front windows did not have the opaque blue window then so they looked like a cassete insertion slot. I also believe that there was a digital tuning display above the windows. (Though they were not common in cars until later). In the beginning, it was set to "104.7" which was WNOK, which was a rock station at the time. Later, for whatever reason (advertising bucks, new manager whatever) the tuning of the building was changed to another station. My memory says it was WCOS, which was a country station, but I could be wrong.

At one time Continental Sound commercials were ubiquitous on Columbia television, so I really should remember exactly what they did. In fact I have only a vague idea that they sold and installed car stereos because the rest of the commercial was what drew my (and everybody's) attention. Their commercials were always tagged by a girl delivering the catch phrase Sounds Real Good! in a really appealing manner. I say "catch phrase", but I believe it was just meant to be a one-time commercial closing line, until she sold it so well that they went on to feature it in every commercial they did. Again, my memory may be playing me false as it often does, but I believe they actually used the same footage all the time, so perhaps the girl was never able to give the line the same oomph in later readings. Eventually, they did change it -- sort of. The original "sounds real good" girl was average looking -- perfectly OK, but not actress/model quality in the looks department. The final "sounds real good" commercials used a sexier girl who lip synched to the original girl's line.

I don't know what happened to Continental Sound. I think they folded or moved in the 1990s. Google suggests that after that the building was home to Big Apple Music which, I think, left the building's radio motif alone. I can understand why Cash -n- Dash wanted to change it -- it's certainly not what you would expect for that type of operation and would tend to confuse casual traffic, but it's still a shame to lose such a unique building. Though I suppose in a few years parents would have had to explain what a "cassette" was anyway..

UPDATE 14 September 2021: Adding map icon and updating tags.

Sticky Fingers was yet another victim of the declining fortunes of the Dentsville area. I believe that they were the second tenant in this building, which was built for O'Charleys before that operation followed The Olive Garden, Lizard's Thicket, Circuit City, Target, Office Depot, JC Penny and Kroger Sav-On to the new developments further out on Two Notch or at Sandhill. The closing sign says they lasted five years, though I woudn't have guessed that long.

I can't comment on their ribs as I'm not a rib guy. I believe I ate there only twice and had a burger both times. It was fine, though not spectacular. I'm a little curious about what's going on with the building. It appears to have been kept in pretty good shape, and to have not been cleaned out (notice the gum machines still in there). Furthermore, I didn't see a for-sale or for-lease sign anywhere. I wonder if Sticky Fingers is holding on to it for some reason.

UPDATE 16 May 2010 -- It's now a "brazillian-style" restaurant, Caprioska:

Their web site is here

UPDATE 19 August 2022: Adding map icon and updating tags.

By the time Sears moved from Harden Street to Columbia Mall, it was long past the catalog glory days of being the company you could by anything from, but it hadn't yet been so bloodied in the retail wars that it would reject odd ideas out of hand.

This concrete slab in the Columbia Mall parking lot by the Charleston Crab House (and still actually owned by Sears to judge from the tow-away signs) was one of them. Over this slab was a canopy, and under the canopy was an island with a number of Sears-branded gas pumps. I don't remember a whole lot about the place as we only filled up one of two times there. I'm pretty sure it was self-serve, but since there was no such thing as electronic credit card reading pumps at the time, there certainly would have been a cashiers shed with an attendant. You could pay with cash, or, of-course, with your Sears Card.

My memory is that the place was an experiment that didn't last too long. I don't know exactly what happened, but I can hazard some guesses. First, the location was not convenient unless you were already at the mall. Getting in and out of the mall parking lot was (and is) much more time consuming than stoping at a corner station. Second, in the 70s people actually had some brand loyalty to different gas chains, and felt that name-brand gas was a better product than generic. Now we tend to think it's like sugar, and there's no problem buying Domino's if Dixie Crystals is more expensive. Third, at some point in the 70s (I believe) there was a major scandal about Sears's auto repair operation ripping people off (that's why about all they will do nowadays is change tires or batteries). The opprobrium from that may have tainted their gas business in people's minds. Fourth, it is simply the fact that selling gas was not in the core retail market Sears was (is..) trying to serve. As their fortunes declined, they may have decided that selling gas was a distraction and brand-dillution. (Though I have seen Wal-Mart trying the concept recently..).

At any rate, the place closed after not too many years. The canopy stood for several years after that, but was itself finally torn down. I don't remember the tanks being torn out, and there are still some access points, so perhaps they are still there (though that seems like an enviromental cleanup bill waiting to happen if it really is the case).

UPDATE 20 February 2020: Add tags, address, map icon.