Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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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Although I've never eaten at a local Quiznos, I believe I did eat at a DC area location once, and recall it as pretty good. Of course that may be partly because one of the other guys I was eating with was a nice guy but had an interesting personality quirk such that he was never completely satisfied with anything, so at least I liked it better than he did! I find it a little bit interesting that the name they use in their signs has no apostrophe and has the singular, "Sub", not "Subs". You almost have the image that if you were the second guy to get there, the sub would be gone.

This Quiznos, the latest of a number of the chain's outlets to close around town, was at the intersection of Airport Boulevard with the Charleston Highway, across the street from Piggy Park and at the edge of Airport Square with the closed Food Lion. The building looks to have been some other type of fast food outlet before the Quiznos.

I think the door note in this case is pretty straight-forward and classy.

The main Airport Square building is like two sides of a square, with one side parallel to the Charleston Highway and the other parallel to Airport Boulevard. While I was taking these pictures, I noticed a family picking some sort of fruit from trees growing at the end of the building that comes closest to Airport Boulevard. I can't think what is in season now, and I didn't want to bother them by heading towards them and maybe make them think I was some sort of Airport Square guy coming to say "stop that" -- I'll have to go back and see what that was.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

UPDATE 4 Feb 2011 -- It's now open again as Best of China restaurant:

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

Here's an interesting little coda to Friday's posting about the Boozer Book Dispensary. That story noted The State article about both the Boozer and Two Notch stores being folded into one new location.

Well, I went by the old Tillman's Plaza location on Two Noch Sunday evening, and there's an interesting sign on the door. It seems someone connected to that branch feels that the area is still viable for a used book store, and will be re-opening the vacated Book Dispensary space with the same concept and a new name.

I wish them good luck!

UPDATE 28 June 2011 -- The follow-on operation Books Revisited has been open for a good while now:

"What Good Is Sitting Alone In Your Room?"

Actually until the last year or so, I didn't even know there was a drag cabaret in Columbia. I think I had kind of a vague idea that a nightclub was in Punch Line location, but I figured in Five Points it was probably a college hangout.

The building is PT's was in never seemed to really thrive. It's at the way outside edge of Five Points, and aside from The Punch LIne, I can't recall ever stopping there. The address for PT's is Harden Street, but the building also fronts on an odd little section of Senate Street which is totally unconnected with the rest of Senate Street. (Come to think of it, the State House also cuts off Senate Street, so it actually has three discontiguous segments.)

The Free Times says the next tenant in the PT's space will be a burgers and milkshake operation, soooo..

"Right This Way, Your Table's Waiting.."

UPDATE 25 July 2010: OK, the PT's building at 1101 Harden Street has now been demolished. See the link for details.

I was saddened yesterday when I heard that The Book Dispensary at Boozer Shopping Center had closed. As it turns out, like Mark Twain, reports of its death have been exaggerated. (OK, I suppose this is no longer the case for Mark Twain..).

In fact, Columbia's Book Dispensaries have always been a bit peripatetic. The one in the Northeast has had three locations that I can think of, Two fairly close to each other on Two Notch Road, with one stint in the former Winn-Dixie plaza on Decker Boulevard.

I don't think the one near the VA in the Big Lots plaza ever moved before closing, but this one will now have had at three locations. My memory is that it started at Boardwalk Plaza. Boardwalk Plaza was on Bush River Road, somewhere between the K Mart and I-26. The place was called Boardwalk Plaza because all the stores were connected via a raised wooden deck rather than sidewalks. Looking back on it, I think that may be because they were basically in trailers rather than real buildings set on the ground. I could be wrong about that, but whatever the configuration, the plaza was entirely gone by the 1980s, though I can't identify exactly which buildings replaced it.

After leaving Boardwalk, the Dispensary moved to this location in Boozer. As you can see from the pictures, it is actually a fairly large space, indeed larger than I remember though that's not too surprising since the book shelves would have always broken up the view.

As I mentioned in Have Your Say, I used to spend a lot of time in this store (and the first Two Notch location). I would go through the entire science-fiction section book by book, running triage on the books I wanted vs the books I could afford. I would always check out the humor section as well, looking for old books of cartoons, and the juvenile section looking for original series Tom Swift books (though these were becoming collector's items during that period with the prices climbing accordingly).

You can also trade in old books at the Dispensary for store credit, but in general I never could bring myself to part with much of anything, even books I regarded as real stinkers.

I'm afraid my patronage of the Dispensary dropped way off in the late 80s. There were a number of factors, some specific to me, some general. Firstly, I moved out of town. Secondly, I got a real job, and could generally afford to buy any new book I wanted (within reason). Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, there was the Internet. Whereas I used to spend hours going through the shelves at used bookstores and the cutout bins at record stores, now I can find almost any book ever published with a few mouse clicks. There's still the possibility of seeing a book I didn't know beforehand that I wanted at a store, but it's no longer the norm...

Anyway, I wish them luck at the new location, and will try to get over there and check it out at some point.

(Hat tips to commenters Tom & Thomas)

UPDATE 7 May 2010: Well, The State says that the new location is consolidating the Boozer and Two Noch stores, with the Two Notch store already having been closed. I did not know that! I guess it really has been a while since I've been in a BD.

UPDATE 4 June 2012 -- Here (finally!) are some shots of the new location at 710 Gracern Road (parallel to I-126):

Aside from being an interesting article in its own right, Eva's cover story in this week's Free Times has a lot of good pictures of old-time Five Points (as does the front cover of the issue itself).

There are a couple of variations of the name of this car lot on Two Notch Road. McDaniels Acura Value Cars seems to be the most common, but sometimes it's just McDaniels Value Cars, and as you can see on these pictures, the building itself says McDaniels Acura Wholesale.

At any rate, this is on Two Notch Road, just opposite of Arcadia Lakes Drive, and across the street from the old Po Folks Restaurant / Moore For Less car lot. Apparently this intersection is not a good location for a used car store. In fact, Two Notch Road as a whole seems to run through used car lots at a pretty rapid clip -- I've probably done closings for a half dozen or more.

This closing has been talked about long enough that I actually got these photos last year, knowing I would have to deploy them eventually. This Hardee's has been a fixture in the old Five Point's Sears parking lot for years. I think it may even date back to when Gene's Pig & Chick across College Street would have been its competition. (It certainly does not date back to Hardee's original space-age designs such as at Silver City or The Eggroll Station though).

This story from The State last year tells how the Hardee's is going to be replaced with a Chick-Fil-A, and how it will all be carefully landscaped in accordance to the new Five Points streetscaping guidelines. Color me unimpressed. You have only to compare US-17 as it passes through Mount Pleasant where everything is set-back so far and blends in so blandly that you can't even tell you are passing stores that want to sell you something with US-17 in the Myrtle Beach area where even failed and vacant storefronts are exuberant to see how guidelines can suck the life out of a road. Not to mention this quote:

"Chick-fil-A is a business of high quality and we anticipate this development will add great character to the already diverse and eclectic makeup of Five Points," she said.

Of really? Replacing one national fast-food chain (which is actually currently on the rebound) with another national fast-food chain will add character and diversity to Five Points? I guess character and diversity aren't what they once were..

(Hat tips to commenters Tom, Mike D, Larry & Jim)

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