Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This coffee shop, at the corner of Sparkleberry Lane and Clemson Road, and in the same building as the former Za's pizza was one of those places that seemed to have adopted the business strategy of never being open. You know the kind of place -- you're sure they're not out of business, yet every time you drive by the lights are off. Now maybe my view is skewed by Starbucks and expecting a coffee shop to at least be open while it's still light outside during the summer, but my experience is that every time I found myself driving home from Sandhill via I-20 and really wanted a cup of coffee, they were shut. The one exception was when I was in the area around lunch time and found they did, in fact, make a decent latte.

At any rate, they are now definitely closed 24/7

I'm not much of a clothes shopper, so I've never made it to Weathers of Columbia on Devine Street at Woodrow Street, but it looks as if you want to do so, you should do so soon.

Of course, I thought that in 2008 too, and in fact almost did a closing on them then..

This year's sign is a bit more definitively worded, though their web site doesn't have any mention of it.

Rish Florist (aka Rish Flower Shop) is on that little strip of State Street in West Columbia that also houses Terra and The New Bookland Tavern. They appear to have expanded out of their original space over the years to take what looks like three different storefronts. I really like the Depression-era glass blocks in parts of the building.

The closing sign says that they had been there for 57 years -- that is certainly a record that anyone could be proud of.

(Hat tip to commenter JB)

UPDATE 20 September 2012 -- Well, somebody apparently has a plan for this building. The interior has been gutted, and there is some sort of zoning hearing scheduled:

American Apparel was a clothes store on Harden Street, next to the old Hiller Hardware. I gather that it served the young, hip, crowd, which is, um, not me.

In fact, for years, I didn't even know where the store was, just that it had a series of mildly risque ads on the back page of the local alternative weekly, The Free Times. These were constant fodder for the paper's Rant & Rave feature, as here, for instance.

When I went by on Saturday 5 Feb, there was still music playing from the store's door speakers, and two guys hanging around like they were supposed to be loading stuff out of there but couldn't get inside.

Doing a little googling turns of the surprising (to me) fact that American Apparel (AMEX: APP) is the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States.. They also seem to have had a good bit of financial trouble in their retail arm lately, as detailed in this WSJ piece and this "Open Market" piece (which also has an image of an ad they could never have run in Columbia..)

The company's web site goes even farther with ads -- DEFINITELY NSFW!

(Hat tip to commenter Jennifer)

UPDATE 12 September 2011 -- The follow-on operation, Urban Thread & More is open, and apparently has been at least since 16 April 2011:

Here's another of the Columbia area's many car title loan businesses that have gone defunct over the past couple of years. The sign says simply Car Title Loans but online I've seen both of America and of South Carolina tacked onto the end. Whatever the name, I don't believe it was was there all that long -- I have noticed this building off and on over the years, and I think that for a long time it was some sort of mobile-home & camping service center with propane and repair parts.

Arnold's Professional Garment Care (or Arnold's Cleaners as the building signage indicates) looks to have been in this building for a good many years. The plaza, at the North West corner of Meeting and 12th Streets is a bit of a hard luck location, losing its grocery long ago, but Arnold's kept going until this location (there are others) closed on the first of February. If you had clothes there, don't panic -- they've been taken to the North Main Street store.

(Hat tip to commenter Sam)

According to their archived web site this house was built in 1893, and it does remind me of the houses in Fernandina from that era that I used to see growing up.

After being vacant for a while, it was an event and catering operation. I was a bit surprised when I found that online -- I had expected that it had probably been a B&B. The last archived version of the web site dates from June of 2008, and given the threadbareness of the paint in several places, I would guess it probably closed not long after that. It's certainly a beautiful property and I'd like to see it survive even if only a a law-office or whatever...

This Piggly Wiggly was in the High Point Centre shopping center at the north-east corner of Lake Murray Boulevard and Columbiana Drive. As far as I can tell, it closed in 2009, and seems to have pretty well put-paid to the whole plaza in so doing. I rarely get over to Lake Murray Boulevard (as you can see here, I still haven't managed to make it to this Pig in the daytime..) so I don't know the market too well, but this closing seems a bit odd to me.

This is one of the newer, larger, Pigs, so it's not one of the tiny old stores that they are trying to transition out of, and there's certainly no lack of traffic in the Harbison area. In fact, this store sounds as though it were a flagship of sorts, at least this story from 2005 paints it as the store chosen to do the public launch for PW's new "Pay By Touch" system.

This LoopNet listing has a daytime picture of the store with Pig branding (and confirms that it was built in 1994, which still seems pretty recent to me).

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Update closing date to 2 Feb 2008 based on comments.

UPDATE 22 June 2021 -- Now a Stars & Strikes bowling and fun center:

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

Well, that didn't last too long, unfortunately. Gabby's replaced the former Cici's Pizza sometime in the summer of 2010, and according to the legal papers now posted on the door must have closed before 5 Jan 2011.

I never made it to Gabby's but I was hoping that with its launch, the city was at up-one after CiCi's moved to North Main. In the event however, it seems that the net effect is that the city used tax dollars to lure Cici's to a subsidized location and left privately owned Fashion Place in the lurch (and undercut the city's own Decker Corridor efforts).