Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This building, on North Main at the intersection with Sunset Drive, was obviously a fast-food joint of some kind, but I'm not sure which one. I believe at one time or another, a commenter said it was a Church's Chicken, but the street numbers don't match for that. If anyone can identify it, I will change the post title to reflect that.

Currently, it's a TitleMax/CheckMax which seems to be one of those chains favoring old fast-food locations. Interestingly, directly across the street is another "hermit crab" operation, a Family Dollar which moved into the old Eckerd's.

UPDATE 15 July 2010: OK, based on the comments (and confirmed by the 1998 phonebook), this place is identified as a Long John Silver's and I'm changing the post title accordingly.

There were three Goody's locations in Columbia, one on Two Notch Road, one on Bower Parkway and a final one here on Augusta Road in West Columbia. As mentioned in the other posts, the chain went Chapter 11 in 2008 and closed all their Columbia stores.

The one on Bower Parkway has has a couple of temporary tenants like a "Giant Book Sale" and one of those indoor flea-market type things they have at Jamil from time to time. The one on Two Notch is going to have Joann Fabrics as a new tenant, but as far as I know this one near the West Columbia Wal-Mart and I-26 has never had anything set up shop, even on a temporary basis.

The Loopnet listing says there's 31,609 square feet that can be subdivided, but it's been two years already, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

UPDATE 11 March 2021 -- Now a Muv Fitness:

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

UPATE 12 March 2026: Update tags.

Well, another original Dutch Square merchant bites the dust. This cafeteria started with the mall as a Morrison's back in 1970. At some point, Piccadilly bought the Morrison's chain, and the place stayed open with mearly a nameplate change, so I do consider it the same operation over the whole period. The place was on the north side of the mall, on the west entrance corridor, the one where Edkerd's used to be.

I don't believe I have eaten in a cafeteria since the early 1990s. In my mind, they were always associated with visits by elderly relatives, and involved liver, weird rice that didn't stick together like it should, and various carrot concoctions. I do believe the last one I ate in was, in fact, a PIccadilly. I had just started working in Augusta Georgia, and for some reason or other we needed some maps at the office to plan a trip (this was pre Mapquest), so a co-worker and I drove down to the ill-fated Regency Mall on the Gordon Highway to visit a bookstore and eat lunch. I could tell the minute we stepped inside the mall that it was on its way down (what can you expect when the anchor store was Montgomery Ward?), but nonetheless we got our maps and stepped into the Piccadilly. I saw enchiladas, and made the mistake of thinking that cafeteria enchiladas would be like mexican-restaurant enchiladas -- man, they were bad! (To go even further afield, I was probably the slowest guy this co-worker knew, and he was the fastest guy I ever knew. Not on this trip, but on one of our lunch trips, he locked me into his car and was already back into our building before I even realized the inside locks wouldn't work without a key..)

Anyway, with the closure of Piccadilly, I believe only Radio Shack and The Rogue remain from the original contingent of Dutch Square stores.

(Hat tips to commenters Andrew & Joe.)

I really like this building on US-1 near Wal Mart, or at least the classic part of it -- I could do without the two prefab sheds at each end. Whenever I see a gull-wing light tree like the one on the left (west) side of the lot, I get a real feeling of nostalgia. When I was a kid in the mid 1960s, we would take US-301 to Florida every summer and Christmas, and somewhere along that route, there was a big abandoned truck-stop. I don't know where it was exactly, though it was fairly early on the trip, so it was probably in South Carolina (and as we went South, it was on the left). Anyway, the lot was strewn with those gull-wing lights and it always made a big impression on me.

Aside from the light, the canted wrap-around bay windows on the west end are another really nice touch, as is the trapezoidal riser on the east end. They don't make 'em like that anymore. I would guess the building started as a gas station, probably in the late 1950s, but I don't really know.

As of now, KC Customs & Detailing still has a web page up, and from that I can definitely say they were in this spot as late as February 2010. There are also some shots of the building with the KC signage still up.

UPDATE 15 Jan 2011 -- It's now Poppa Joe's New & Used Tires:

UPDATE 14 April 2018 -- Adding "Texaco" to the post title based on the comments

8 July 2010:

13 May 2010:

Well, it looks like the lily pond on Trenholm Road just up from the Arcadia Lakes town hall is gone.

This pond has been a pleasant sight from Trenholm for years, with its almost total cover of lily pads and an old rustic dock on the far side. In the last year or so, it has also been the source of some controversy. It seems a developer has bought the property and wants to build apartments on it. That will require a catchment basin, so he planned to dredge the existing pond to the necessary depth. Since lily pads need shallow water, that would have put paid to them. When word of the plan got out, he apparently was sued by a number of local residents to stop the dredging.

Personally, I'm of two minds about that. I hate to see the pond go, but I have some sympathy for a guy who thought he had jumped through all the hoops and then gets hit with unexpected legal trouble.

However, the really strange thing is that, at least according to The State, in the actual event, nobody seems to know why the water levels in the pond fell. Now, that report is from 15 May (just after I took my first pictures of the pond), so there may have been a determination since then, but that just strikes me as very odd.

The first day I was there, 13 May 2010, there was a guy in a john boat fooling with the concrete "stopper' for the pond. Given what I had read about the controversy, I just assumed he was there to "pull the plug", but perhaps he was simply trying to figure out what was going on. At any rate, on that day, I could see that the water levels were down from the norm by looking around the edges of the pond, and it just got worse every time I went back after that.

By 27 May, the water levels were low enough that you could walk to the "stopper", and on my final (so far) visit on 8 July, most of the pond was dry (except for a small watercourse leading to the stopper) and almost all of the lily pads were dead. At some point, the dock seems to have been partially torn down as well. The back area (where presumably the spring or stream enters the pond) is still very green, and I saw a heron walking around back there, but the front is totally gone.

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I took some daytime pictures of this site, but the sun was against me from the side I was on, and they didn't come out well at all.

Anyway, this building comes up here from time to time, and I've been meaning to do a post on it. The only prior history I knew was Miami Subs Grill which was there at least until 1998. I don't know why i never stopped there. Partly I think because I was living out of town at the time Miami was in business, and I didn't want to take a chance on a place I didn't know versus hitting my known good spots and partly because the name just didn't grab me. When I think "Miami", sandwiches aren't really part of the image that comes to mind, and if I did have to guess at a Miami sandwich specialty, I would have guessed some sort of pressed Cuban sandwich -- subs didn't really enter into it, so it was sort of like seeing a place called New Jersey Grits.

Splendid China was the next tenant, and has been there for quite a while now. Driving by at lunchtime today, it appeared they were doing an excellent business.

Commenter Jimmy provides the D'Lites and Vision Center parts of the building's pre-Miami history, which I don't recall at all.

(Hat tip, obviously, to commenter Jimmy.)

UPDATE 9 July 2010: Added "Salisbury" to "Vision Center" in the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 8 October 2025: Update tags and add map icon. Add State article from commenter Midnight Rambler.

Commenter Midnight Rambler sends this articl from The State on 17 January 1986:

Well, it appears the North Main Deli is no more. I never stopped there, and don't know a lot about the place, but from the sign on their door, it appears to be another casualty of the times. I believe the former Cici's Pizza from Decker is moving in next door, so I guess it's lose one, win one for this block of Main.

As a total aside, does anyone know if "North Main" is an official name? If you live on this section of Main Street, do you get your mail as "XXXX North Main Street", or just "XXXX Main Street"? I've seen it both ways, and I never know how to list the correct addresses in post titles and the alphabetical list.

(Hat tip to commenter Marsha.)

Get out there and hold some truths to be self evident!

And grill some hot dogs.

This is vacation phase 1, probably no posting for several days.

Well, this is interesting. I wrote about this building before under the mistaken impression that it was part of the old Quality Inn / Travelodge Suites property at 1539 Horseshoe Drive. As it turns out, I was wrong. This building was a totally seperate operation, and was just a typical office building.

Except that it turns out that one of the offices was used by the infamous 3 Hebrew Boys investment scam operation. In fact, according to this affidavit, two of the 3HB were actually arrested at this location.

Of course what got me to revisit this location and google the address was the fact that as I was driving by recently, I saw that it had almost totally burned down. Apparently this happened on 26 April, and here is what the appointed receiver for 3HB has to say about it:

On April 26, 2010 at approximately 1:00 pm, Richland County firefighters responded to a smoke alarm signal received from the office building located at 1529 Horseshoe Drive, Columbia, SC. The building is presently titled in the name of Daniel Development Group , LLC and was once used as the headquarters for Capital Consortium Group, LLC, a business among others that is referred to as the "Three Hebrew Boys". The building has been under the control of the Receiver since October 2007. The building and all contents therein were completely destroyed by the fire and has unofficially been determined to be a total loss. All computers and documents have been stored off-site since the Receiver took possession of the building in October 2007. The building was being managed by a reputable property management company, fully insured and continuously monitored by a security company. The Receiver will make a claim immediately with the Hartford Insurance Company for the full value of the building with the insurance proceeds going to the benefit of the victims.

Of course not everybody has gotten the news, and the building is still listed for sale on Loopnet.

There's an older picture there, and here are my pix from the other post I mentioned, which still have all the legal verbiage posted on the doors:

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"Your Host From Coast-to-Coast"

I went looking for this building on Knox Abbott last year, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing at that address now. The postcard certainly makes what appears to be a rather nondescript building look impressive by adding a sharp car and elegant model, even if there is perhaps a touch too much of "the old South" in the pose chosen.

My experience with Holiday Inns over the years has been mixed. I currently seek out the Holiday Inn Express sites, which seem to be uniformly good. The "regular" HIs can be a mixed bag. The one I used to go to quite often in DC invariably had the freeze/bake thermostat system, and at least once seemed to have gotten the cold and hot water pipes running to my room backwards (though luckily, hot was at best "tepid" in that case).