Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Noticed Monday night as I was coming out of Carrabba's that Fruiti Cup frozen yogurt in Sparkleberry Square was gone. Well, actually that's not quite accurate because I never knew it was there first, and I couldn't completely tell if it were going out or coming in. A little googling established it though, and puts the date sometime after 3 August.

This spot was originally, or at least previously Ritz Camera, and this closing adds one more to Sparkleberry Square's list.

UPDATE 12 September 2011 -- Some daylight pix:

UPDATE 17 April 2012 -- Looks like it's to be Dickey's Barbecue Pit restaurant:

UPDATE 29 June 2012 -- As commenter Andrew mentions below, Dickey's is now open:

There are no gas stations on Two Notch Road between Fontaine Road and O'Neil Court.

Well, I suppose it wasn't too surprising that after S & S closed at Richland Mall and Piccadilly closed at Dutch Square, Piccadilly closed at Columbia Mall sometime early this month.

It can't have been great being located in-between two dead anchors, Penny's & Dillard's, but I don't think being near Macy's or Sears would have made any difference. I think cafeterias are kind of a dying breed, and you can't compound that by being in a dying mall.

(Hat tip to commenter Bobby G)

I was having lunch at Panera in Sandhill Saturday when I heard someone in an adjacent booth talking about a clothing store that had closed shop recently. I didn't catch the name, but when I stepped outside I saw that it must have been Talbots on the other side of the street that sparked the conversation.

As I hate shopping for clothes in general, and am even more clueless about women's clothes, I really had no mental picture of where Talbots fit on the retail map. A bit of googling however revealed that it is a somewhat upscale chain largely for women over 30, and has been struggling financially for a while now.

There 's an old story, probably apocryphal, about a feed company that hired a top ad agency to design a campaign to sell its dog food. The ads were brilliant, won awards and everyone loved them, but sales plummeted. The company finally hired a troubleshooter who investigated and issued a succinct report: "The dogs don't like the dog food".

The Wall Street Journal gives as delicate a version of that quote as I have ever heard in the words of Talbots's CEO:

The predominant factors impacting our results were an inconsistent customer response to our merchandise assortments..

The article also goes on to posit a lose/lose situation:

The apparel retailer has been trying to freshen the look of its merchandise and broaden its appeal beyond its core audience of older women. But the approach may be turning them off while also not bringing in new customers.

Other papers speculate that the chain may be heading for a takeover, and mention that it is closing 110 of its 568 stores.

Talbots had three stores in the Columbia area. This one, one on Forest Drive and one on Saint Andrews Road. I drove by the Forest Drive store this evening and it is still there. I have not been by the Irmo location.

I seem to end up taking Pinestraw to Fontaine to I-20 quite a bit, and would notice this little book and gift shop from time to time as I started angling for the left turn lane. A while ago I noticed that I wasn't noticing it..

The property is sandwiched between Satchel Ford and Two Notch just past Mr. Muffler and semi-across from Rogers Car Stereo in a hilly lot that is a little hard to get in and out of. I took a closer shot somewhere, and will add it when it turns up, but my memory is that Suite-D is the far right slot in the building.

I did a closing for this building a while back starting as Antonio's Restaurant and going through a number of different nightclubs and strip clubs.

At the time I made that post, the building seemed to be operating as Club Ego (despite the Studio 54 sign still being up). Since that time, Club Ego apparently shut down, and Club Colorz opened and shut.

I'm putting the closing date for Club Colorz as December 2010 because the flyers posted by the door talk about Christmas events (though I am not nearly hip enough to understand the contests being described), but not New Years events.

The building still has power, and is lighted nightly, so I presume there will be a new club by and by.

UPDATE 4 September 2011 -- It's now Laguna Sports Bar:

Well, darn -- another "I'll get there someday" restaurant is gone. On the other hand, the menu at the follow-on operation, Polliwogs looks pretty good.

The LoopNet listing for the building says that the owner of Icy's was retiring rather than business being bad at this location. It also says the building was built in 1984, which is about what I remember. I recall a promising looking restaurant starting there (not Icy's, which this site claims dates to 2004) just about the time I left town to live in Fayetteville. As for Icy's itself, it seems to me it may have started at the much-restauranted sports bar outparcel at Columbia Mall and then migrated down Two Notch, but I'm not sure of that.

UPDATE 12 June 2011 -- Here's the original Columbia Mall location for Icy's:

Also added the name Josh's to the post title based on the comments.

I had been wondering about this vacant lot at Fore Avenue just past Husqvarna and across from Sandhill for a while, but it seemed that whenever I was in the area I would forget exactly where it was and drive past it.

Given the poster I found in the ditch, I thought for a minute it might have been a trailer operating as a botique, but instead, and unsurprisingly, it turned out to be another of Two Notch Road's many car lots.

It's obviously been closed for more than a few years as the whole lot is becoming verdant and overgrown (even including small trees). There are for-sale signs just past the paved frontage, but it's not clear to me whether it includes this lot, or just the wooded area at the next corner (Two Notch & Burmaster Drive). In theory these should be valuable properties due to the Sandhill proximity, but given that Sandhill can't even get full occupancy at present, "in theory" may be the operative words.

UPDATE 7 June 2016 -- Now Hobby Lobby and associated fronting strip-mall:

Commenter Megan asked about this place several months ago, and nobody had any response. I finally got a chance to go out there on a nice sunny day and take a look around. What I found is really odd.

This building sits more or less at the intersection of Two Notch Road and Fashion Drive (google maps claims the street is Fashion Lane) which is the stop-lighted Two Notch entrance to The Village at Sandhill. It's in a Sandhill outparcel called Sandhill Station with a Cici's Pizza and Christian bookstore.

However, while the Cici's building is obviously newly built, it was, for some reason, built flush up against this older building. In fact, depending on how you want to define "building" you could almost say it's one building with a new part and an old part.

There is no indication of what this older building was. It obviously dates back at least 20 years, and would probably at one time (before Fashion Drive) have been counted as being on Two Notch Road (albeit on an access road on the wrong side of the tracks). It has the look of a light manufacturing operation of some kind. If you look at the google satellite image here, you can see that it had a huge employee parking lot, some of which is in use by Sandhill Station now, and some of which is sort of going to seed.

I can't imagine why things worked out this way unless Sandhill planned to buy and knock down the building, but it fell through in the crash. The new part is well maintained, but the old part is heavily vandalized, tagged and overgrown. I suppose it is still within the realm of possibility that it could be rehabilitated with some intense TLC, but it seems unlikely, and the new businesses can't be happy about the image it gives them -- surely if it were under the control of Sandhill Station, it would be gone.

Even new, most of the building would have been pretty pedestrian, but the glassed in staircase entrance is actually quite attractive, especially with the bright aqua color scheme.

(Hat tip to commenter Megan)

UPDATE 12 May 2011: OK, given the address commenter Badger dug up, 10261 Two Notch Road, I can find a little more information, and have changed the post title from the generic "Building".

The first reference I find to that address is a press release from September of 2000 saying that a New York based Internet business called Virtual Growth was going to bring 300 jobs to that location. Of course that date was just about the burst date for the Internet Bubble, so I don't know if Virtual Growth ever arrived or not. (BTW, in computer terms, something is "virtual" when it appears to be there when it is in fact not..)

Next, it appears that Blue Cross & Blue Shield ran a Medicare operation out of that location.

I don't know when they left, but I surmise that their move left the building's owner, Parcone Development Corporation in a bind, because I find this note in the Columbia Star from May 2006 saying that Regions Bank was forclosing on Parcone, and that the property was to be sold at auction on 5 June 2006 at high noon. Judging from the current condition of the property, I suspect they did not find a buyer. This Property valuation for 2009/2010 is consistent with that, in that it still lists Parcone as the owner. However that doesn't square with the announced terms of the auction which stated that anyone except Parcone could participate..

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