Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

When I first wrote about this Two Notch building a few weeks ago in a closing for Huddle House, it was For Sale but still in business. Now, it is still For Sale but out of business.

It's not a bad little building and I'm sure something else will go in. Certainly, the adjacent Hi LIne Imports didn't stay vacant long.

While I was stuck in traffic Wednesday afternoon on Two Notch at I-77, I noticed that Golf Headquarters, in the old Galaxy World building, is gone, or has been bought out.

The signs for Edwin Watts Golf are still quite temporary looking, and I'm pretty sure I drove that stretch in daylight quite recently, so I'm calling early this month as the changeover date. It continues to amaze me how much commercial activity is centered around the most boring game in the world -- (with apologies to my college roommate..)

UPDATE 7 January 2013: Fix street address from 7813 to 7814. Add pictures.

Gibson Uniforms was in the little strip mall at the top of the hill where Two Notch Road and Pine Belt Road intersect. It's a fairly new development, but has never really seemed to thrive. The Food Lion which moved from the other side of Beltline and Family Dollar do good business, but the other storefronts seem to turn over fairly often.

At some point in 2010, according to their sign, and the 2010 & 2011 phonebooks, Gibson relocated to Fashion Place on Decker Boulevard, countering several closings there.

UPDATE 8 July 2011: Added picture of their new storefront in Fashion Place

This smallish building on a Two Notch side Columbia Mall outparcel was obviously once a bank. I really like the design, especially the endpiece which sits closest to Two Notch, and which looks like a grooved VHS cassette stood up against the rest of the building. It's just a nice little grace note that gives the building a certain retro aesthetic (it was supposedly built in 1967 which would predate the mall itself by around ten years).

WIllis Chiro Med was in the building for a number of years, something I would vaguely notice driving by. I'm not exactly sure when they closed, but given that they are listed in the current 2011 phonebook, it must have been well into 2010.

Today's post is just across the street from yesterday's post, on the Southwest corner of Two Notch and Covenant Roads (or since Covenant changes names when it crosses Two Notch, say rather on the corner of Two Notch Road & Germany Street). Normally I might not do two closings so close to each other in sequence, but given all the recent discussion about the Conrad's building, I thought it appropriate because clearly, whatever gas station that building was, this building was too -- it has the exact same curve to the right front "corner", the same shelf to the right front roofline, the same front door and window structure, and assuming the leftmost bay at Conrad's might have been bricked up, the same bay structure.

All I can say about K & C Radiator Center is that they sold and fixed radiators, and listed in the Feb 2008 phonebook, but not the Feb 2010 one.

UPDATE 15 October 2013 -- It's now a used car lot:

This little building at the Southeast corner of Two Notch & Covenant Roads is apparently an outbuilding on the L'il Cricket lot, or at least there doesn't seem to be a separate tax record for it. This Administrative Law Court decision (for Li'l Cricket's beer & wine permit) suggests that it was initially a smoke shop, but google says that more recently, it has been Willie's and Biddy's Corner Grill.

I was going to go back some later when I had time to stop and get closeups of the signs in the window and get a longer shot showing where it is in relation to the convenience store, but somehow I never did. At any rate, it is a tiny space, and looking at the windows, seems to have been mainly a walk-up operation.

UPDATE 18 September 2013 -- Here are some pictures of it as Biddy's:

and here it is in operation again as Wright's Eatery:

I don't know anything about Tires Unlimited other than that they sold used tires and were located in a very neat little building that was obviously once a service station.

It appears to be of an early '60s vintage, similar in some ways to the old Bill DuBose 66 station on Covenant.

The building now seems to be an impromptu parking lot for Blue Ribbon, and looks like it could use some TLC.

UPDATE 18 March 2011: Added "Patterson's Texaco" to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 25 May 2016 -- This place is to be a gas station again, albeit with a convenience store rather than service bays this time. Cheap Way is coming:

This building, on Two Notch Road, next to the former Hi Line Imports, and more or less across the street from the former Ranch Restaurant, had a definite Huddle House look to it, but I couldn't ever remember actually having seen a Huddle House there. Some research in old city directories at the library showed that 4967 Two Notch Road did not exist as a street address prior to this building being built, and that it was in fact built as a Huddle House.

The ad is from the February 1990 Bellsouth phonebook, and the restaurant did not last long beyond that, being gone by the February 1992 directory. As far as I can tell, there were never two Huddle House restaurants open in Columbia at the same time, and shortly after this one closed, the one at 3801 Rosewood Drive began listing in the phonebook. That could mean either that this one relocated, that the chain was only issuing one franchaise for Columbia at a time, or it could simply be a coincidence.

Today the building is Auto Image, where summer lasts all year.

UPDATE 17 August 2023 -- Update tags, add map icon.

Here's another Columbia Mall closing. This is the first time I've been in the mall since Tumbleweeds and it actually felt a little livelier this time though I still see about the same number of shuttered shops. I guess this one, apparently a custom gift and embroidery shop, will be one more.

(Hat tip to commenter Dustin)

This building, on a Columbia Mall outparcel facing Two Notch Road, was built as a Don Pablo's Mexican restaurant. By the time I did a closing for Don Pablo's, in March of 2008, the building had been a Charleston Crab House (they list in the phonebook as "Charleston Crabhouse" for some reason) for a couple of years already.

Like lobsters and shrimp, I consider crabs "sea bugs" and don't want anything to do with them so I never checked the place out. I do know that they used to have another Columbia store somewhere out by Columbiana Mall and they still have three locations in the Charleston area. Interestingly The State quoted the owners in a story about business taxes back in Jan 2011:

Charleston Crab House owner John Keener is fuming.

“We’re getting taxed on future growth of our business,” said Keener, whose three Lowcountry restaurants employ about 220 workers during the busiest time of year.

Keener said the tax increase, which will cost him more than $4,000 this year, caught him off guard. He warned his colleagues of the increase in an e-mail blast he sent out earlier this week.

That text suggests that the Columbia store was already closed on 15 Jan 2011, so I am putting the closing date as "late 2010". At any rate I don't think it could have been too long given the equipment still inside the place.
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