Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

As reported by commenter Andrew, the Food Lion in Polo Plaza has upped shop and moved to the old Bi-Lo in Spring Valley Commons.

This move leaves not a lot in Polo Plaza, which Domino's having moved last year.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 2 May 2020: Changed the move date from March 2020 to June 2019 based on the comments.

Aladdin occupied the spot formerly allocated to the Saint Andrews branch of Capitol Newsstand, and was apparently more of a grocery than a restaurant, at least according to both their name and their Yelp reviews.

I had thought they had closed several years ago, but I see they listed in the 2018 phonebook, so I will say "2018" for the closing date. They have been replaced by one of the inexplicable raft of new crab restaurants in town.

UPDATE 21 November 2020: Updated tags

I didn't go there too often, but I liked Earth Fare. It was kind of in between The Fresh Market (one of my main go-tos) and Whole Foods, but without being obnoxious like Whole Foods.

As The State reported, the chain announced on 3 February 2020 that they were going into liquidation and closing all stores:

In a news release Monday, the Asheville-based company pointed to “challenges in the retail industry” that have kept the company from expanding and improving and have hindered “its ability to refinance its debt.”

“As a result, Earth Fare is not in a financial position to continue to operate on a go-forward basis. As such, we have made the difficult, but necessary decision to commence inventory liquidation sales while we continue to engage in a process to find potential suitors for our stores,” the company said in its release.

As of yesterday (16 February 2020), the store was still open, but I did not go inside to see how picked-over it was.

UPDATE 14 August 2020 -- The new owners are apparently about ready to reopen. The shelves are stocked with non-perishables, and they are hiring:

UPDATE 20 August 2020 -- Open again:

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)

Save A Lot was the follow-on operation here to Columbia Food Fresh Market which closed in 2010. This location closed briefly in December of 2018 when the operator closed this store and nine others. Since then, the place has been run by a unit of the Columbia Housing Authority, which seems like a bad idea, and in fact, has not worked out. I'm not even sure how they were able to take over the franchaise and branding.

At any rate, they are pulling the plug at 5:00pm on 24 August 2019, although as the WLTX article notes the shelves are already bare and the place appeared to be closed when I drove by at 6pm on the 21st.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

The State says this store opened in January of 2016, giving it just a three year run. The company states they gave it a

thoughtful review process

which I take to mean it was losing money hand-over-fist given they could not have paid off the initial investment in that period and would, I suspect, have stayed if there were a reasonable prospect of doing so in the near term.

Given how long it has taken to re-purpose other buildings on Broad River Road, I see this building as an empty white elephant for years to come.

(Hat tip to commenter Dustin)

I took these pictures after the store closing was announced, but before the closing signs went up. I had meant to swing back by there at some point, but in the event did not get around to it.

The State article said the last day of March was expected to be the final one, so I presume they are now closed.

Well, I would rather not take pictures through the passenger side window just to keep the camera semi-dry, but those are the conditions that prevail lately..

This Bi-Lo is on Emanuel Church Road in West Columbia in a spot where I am fairly sure I have never been before. In fact, I drove out there last week, headed down that branch of Emanuel Chruch Road, decided that things were petering out and turned around and went the other way.

This store is part of the latest round of Bi-Lo & Harveys closings, and presumably will be gone by the end of the month as these closeouts don't usually take too long.

UPDATE 10 May 2021 -- Now open as a Food Lion:

As I was driving through Greeleyville recently, I decided to see if the road by the high school cut back through to US-521 rather than just staying on 521 all the way. As it turns out, it doesn't quite, but comes close enough to see where you have to go to get back on the main route. At any rate, while I was doing that, I noticed this vacant grocery store. It was plainly an IGA at one time, but ended up as a Super G Foods (or Foo as the sign would now have it).

Google Maps suggests the address may be 21 C E Murphy Boulevard -- that's certainly the street name.

This article puts the closing date as bfore September 2013, and has pictures of the store in slightly less decrepit shape. It also notes that this was the only grocery in Greeleyville (which Wikipedia suggests had 375 souls in the 2009 census) and that residents must now drive to Kingstree for a real grocery store, which is a shame.

As mentioned by commenter ED a while back, this Bi-Lo in Spring Valley Commons is the only one in Columbia currently slated to close and re-open as a Food Lion.

The process has now started, and while the shelves are getting rather bare, there are definitely some good deals to be had, as everything seems to be at least 40% off. I do find it rather curious that they have eschewed the normal Closing signs here. I was not in fact sure the clearance had begun because there is no indication in any of the windows. The closest thing is a small paper sign posting reduced hours, but not saying why.

It will be interesting to see how much work Food Lion does on the interior here.

(Hat tip to commener ED)