Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This little cell-phone storefront was in one of the more vintage strip malls left on Forest Drive, more or less across the street from Frank's carwash. I see in these pictures a sign on the door that I didn't notice while taking them, and which I should have gotten out and looked at. It probably either explains where they've moved to, or directs customers to another existing store. (There's probably an ap for that..)

UPDATE 15 February 2014 -- This is to be a Jimmy John's:

UPDATE 26 March 2014 -- Jimmy John's is open:

According to this press release Baker Brothers American Deli came to South Carolina on 29 November 2007, with the opening of the Lexington store. That was to be the first of three stores in the Columbia market. I believe this store, beneath the upscale Adesso condos (themselves built on the site of the former mini-mall housing Pappy's and Robo's Video Arcade) was the second Columbia location. A google search suggests the third store was at 1730 Main Street, but I can't bring that one to mind without driving by.

At any rate, according to the franchaise map here all the South Carolina stores are now gone. The map is actually rather interesting in that persuing a Texas, Iowa, Indiana and Kentucky stragegy seems a bit unusual. Things could apparently be going better though, since apart from Texas (which is the home state and has 12 locations) each other state has only one. I never ate at Baker Bros. From the menu and web site, it seems sort of like another McAlister's Deli, a restaurant I never really warmed up to.

As mentioned by commenter Dave, the next business in this slot looks to be a yogurt operation called Yog Hut. My impression based on peering in the corner entrance is that Yog Hut will not be using the full Baker Bros space though.

UPDATE 21 May 2010: Commenter ChiefDanGeorge says the Yog Hut entrance is a different space, so I've added a picture of the Main Street doors. He also suggests that the Yog Hut opening is stalled.

UPDATE 8 July 2010 -- Well if it was stalled, it's unstalled and open now:

(Hat tip to commenter Mike)

UPDATE 28 June 2019: Add tags, map icon.

Actually, I don't remember this place as a Caribbean restaurant at all, but that's what google is turning up for it. Apparently it was an attempt at doing well by doing good, as this 1999 ABC permit hearing decision notes:

The permit was granted despite some misgivings by a neighbor business, but as far as I can tell, the restaurant did not last long at all. I have not verified that by any phonebook research, but note that the only "Five Points Association Member Sticker" in the window is for 1999. The building certainly has not seen much if any work since then, and appears to be in a fairly advanced state of disrepair.

Now, despite not finding any online evidence for it, what I remember this place as is some sort of night club which used the roof as a deck. You can see the hutch that presumably terminates a staircase from the ground floor, and the roof is also directly accessible from the side street as the building is more or less cut into a hillside. I can remember thinking that it was pretty neat though I never visited the club.

I did find this 1998 zoning board minutes which implies that the place was some sort of restaurant in 1990 which was forclosed on at some later point, but no other details are offered..

I think I also remember some sort of drumming studio here as well.

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Here's another closed Food Lion to go with the ones on Two Notch Road, Taylor Street and Airport Boulevard. This Loopnet picture shows the store in happier times.

The story on the WLTX site, calls the store underperforming and gives 19 Feb as an upper bound on the closing date.

I had never been in this Food Lion, but I suspect it was an older store, which would have been up against a newer Bi Lo in the same general area. The newer Food Lion stores are actually quite nice -- I stopped at the one off the Ballentine I-26 exit the other day when I was looking for The Whale's Tail and it was very upscale.

Even after the Seven Oaks Shopping Center closing, there is still a Food Lion on Saint Andrews Road. It's on past the former Clusters of Whitehall towards I-26, in front of the discount cinema.

(Hat tip to commenter Jamie)

UPDATE 12 September 2011 -- Now open as a Big Lots!:

Here's another vacancy at The Shoppes of O'Neil Court. According to Loopnet there are currently six open spots there. This one has been vacant going on half a year now, and the Pro Golf of Columbia slot has been vacant at least a year and a half..

According to the Roundabouts web site, they were established in 2003 as Capital City Consignments and this site was their second storefront, the original one being another slot in the same plaza. This January they moved into the old Stein Mart location at 70 Polo Road. To me it seems like sort of a wash from a visibility point of view. O'Neil Court is off the beaten path, but while the Polo / Two Notch location gets a lot more drive-bys, it's up on a hill that makes it invisible from the road, and there's really nothing else in that plaza to pull traffic in...

UPDATE 7 September 2012 -- There is now (and has been for a while) another consignment store Divine Consign in the old Roundabouts location:

We never ate at The Whale's Tail growing up. I wasn't a big seafood fan (which is to say I refused to eat the stuff), and my parents didn't push the issue too often (in fact we used to go to Oliver's Lodge before 5pm because I could get spaghetti before 5 but not after. (Which really sounds odd to me at this remove, but I'm pretty sure thats right..).

Anyway, while I never went there, I used to see the billboards from time to time, and I decided to go looking for it today. The old phonebooks (the above ad is from the 1977 one) never give a real street address for it (it was pretty far out in the boonies back in the day) but I took exit 97 both ways and didn't see anything that looked probable. There's certainly a lot of new construction in the area, and I suspect the building must have been torn down long ago. Can anyone confirm or refute that? The only possible place I saw was Little Pigs barbecue which looked to be the right vintage, but I always imagined The Whale's Tail as a bigger building.

UPDATE 27 May 2010: Added shots of Little Pigs which turns out to be the old Whale's Tail building.

UPDATE 15 February 2012: The Italian restaurant was Rubino's Italian Restaurant and I have added it to the post title along with the full Broad River Road street address.

I continue to have a bit of a fascination with Intersection Center. The whole property has been up for sale several years now, but (rather unsurprisingly) it has yet to sell. Fairly recently, the owner (I assume) went as far as to blank out the "Intersection Center" sign on the Broad River Road entrance to the complex, though it is still up on the Dutch Square side.

Despite the rapidly increasing decrepitude of all the buildings in the area, a few stores (or storefronts anyway, I think one may be some sort of church) do hold on. All Breed Dog Grooming Shop is not one of those. I do know it was open as recently as 1998, so I've simply listed the closing date as 2000s.

We used to get our dogs sheared evey summer, but we never had one groomed. It sounds like kind of a poodle thing to me (not that there's anything wrong with that..)

UPDATE 22 January 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

I just thought this one was a little odd. The ad is from the 1985 Bellsouth phonebook. Sometime between then and now, the name of this backgate restaurant at Fort Jackson Boulevard & I-77 was changed from Saki to Saky. If you look at the photo, you can see how the 'I' was replaced by a 'Y' in the mural (which is very similar, though not identical to the Yellow Pages art).

The only reason for something like this that I can think of is that the ownership changed at some point, and the new owner didn't have permission to keep using the same name, but was able to keep something very similar..

Well, it is a bit sad to see their street sign proclaiming their first anniversary and then to have them closed 16 days later, but that's how it happens sometimes. (Though they apparently still have an operation in Florence).

I wrote about this building first in a closing for Cancun / Little Mexico, so the building has been at least three different Mexican restaurants. Loopnet says the place was built in 1980 and is a "Spanish Style" restaurant, so it probably has been Mexican restaurants since it was built. Notice also the fundamental tension in the Loopnet write-up (apparently left over from 2007 or so) between keeping something secret and posting it on the Internet..

I did not yet notice any "for sale" signs on the building last week, but I suppose it will be another Mexican restaurant someday.

(Hat tip to commenter IrmoJeff)

UPDATE 29 Sep 2010: The restaurant is being converted into a Wata Wing -- or maybe not.

Commenter Matt found this PDF of a legal action in Maryland against Wata Wing which seems to basically indicate that while there may be legit WW restaurants, the franchaising operation is pretty much a scam. The work being done on the Mi Teirra building matches the description in the PDF pretty much to a tee, right down to the work on the floors and the note on the door indicating that it was started without getting the proper permits. To me, the oddest thing in the PDF is that apparently none of the people in Maryland investing in WW franchaises ever asked to visit an operating WW, or at least that's the implication I'm getting. The Taco Bell on Knox Abbott seems to be in a similar state of Wata Wing stall-out.

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