Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

House Brand was one of the two new operations (Turning Pointe is the other) that set up shop in the old Steak & Ale on Forest Drive.

It's an interesting building, done in that faux Tudor style that Steak & Ale used. Barring a fire or some other catastrophe, I've got enough furniture to last a lifetime, so I never stopped by House Brand, but it looks to have been in the part of the building that was briefly Buster's Bistro, and judging from their web site which is still up at present, they were a local family firm specializing in somewhat offbeat designs. Unfortunately, around when they opened, the bottom fell out of the housing market, and that hit the furniture (and appliance) business especially hard.

UPDATE 25 June 2010: Added some more photos.

OK, you knew you were going to be seeing these pictures again, right?

Frankly, until I saw the old pictures, I had completely forgotten there was ever a store called The Banker's Note in Trenholm Plaza, and even after seeing them, I had no idea what it was, or what it sold.

As you can see, the store was east of the A&P and more or less where the current Books-A-Million is. From this shot, it's unclear to me if it included the corner location where the plaza dips north.

Doing a bit of googling turns up this information:

Ten years ago last month Suchik opened the first Banker's Note store in Roswell, Ga., outside Atlanta. In 1981 he took the four-unit operation public to repay his manufacturer-partner, with profits. Two years ago there were 32 of the units averaging 4,000 sq. ft. One year ago there were 42 Banker's Note stores. At this writing, there are 72 units with 18 more planned by the end of the current fiscal year.

The five year plan, Suchik said, calls for year plan, Suchik said, in sales by the fiscal year ending Feb. 1, 1991. For the year ended Feb 1, 1987, sales hit $34.8 million. Wall Street sees the chain pulling in a volume of $47 to $53 million for the current fiscal year.

In the next five years, store expansion will be concentrated in the nine southeastern states The Banker's Note already operates in from North Carolina down to Florida and Westward to Tennessee and Texas. The chain possibly will invade adjacent markets in Oklahoma and perhaps Arkansas, Suchik added.
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Its ambitious expansion plans, the proliferation of off-pricing and discounting by traditional stores continue to force constant adjustments. "In this business no one can afford to rest on his laurels,' said Suchik.

by 1997 the firm had renamed itself to VSI Holdings, Inc.. I'm a bit unclear as to whether a change of ownership happened then, but I don't think so, as the HQ was still in Smyrna.

It appears that VSI had wider ambitions than just clothing, and that in 1999 they made a move into the software business. Maybe that didn't go so well, because by 2001 the owners were shopping the company around, looking for a buyer. It looked as if SPX would do the deal, but the deal unexpectedly fell-through later that year. Apparently after that, the company tried to wind down in an orderly fashion, but in late 2002 a lawsuit by "recalcitrant creditors" forced them into an unplanned Chapter 11.

One thing I don't see anywhere is any mention of why they ever called themselves The Banker's Note. It's certainly not a name that suggests apparel. I'm not sure when this store closed, but it was definitely gone by 1998.

Well, today marked the end of another Columbia institution that I somehow never managed to visit. In this case I attribute it to not spending any time downtown coupled with the parking issue, but that's no real excuse, I suppose.

The details were in the Free Times a few weeks back. It seems that SCANA's exit was a factor, as with some other places.

The Palmetto Sandwich Shop was on Sumter street just across from the old RCPL location and the YMCA. This is actually a much-restauranted block, and I was surprised to find Greek Boys, Palmetto Sandwich Shop, some new restaurant setting up, Miyo's and Quizno's all together like that. 26 years is an eternity in restaurant terms, so they made a good run of it, and they made a classy exit with the "Gone Fishin'" banner.

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Stellini's was on the corner nearest to Columbia Mall at The Shops at O'Neil Court. I believe it was perhaps the longest lasting restaurant in that little hard-luck plaza, though as I recall the sports bar run by the Very's folks lasted a number of years as well.

This ad from the 1998 Bellsouth yellow pages claims the largest selection of pasta in Columbia. I actually can't remember much about that. If I am remembering correctly, the times we went there, what most impressed me was the garlic bread, which was strong and gooey, not that "hint of garlic on overbaked toast" thing some places do. I do think they had a number of pesto dishes which weren't too common at the time, but while I might try one now, at that point I was still fully in tomato-based mode.

I don't think business was ever great in this location despite theoretical drive-by traffic between Columbia Mall and Two Notch, and I wasn't too surprised when the place closed. I believe at least two other restaurants tried the spot (there was definitely one) but nothing ever lasted long-term, and currently the space is empty and available.

When I posted on Hola Mexico a few days ago, commenter Ken noted that before being a restaurant, the place had been a minature golf establishment.

I don't remember that at all, but sure enough, behind the restaurant you can still see the concrete remnants of the greens. Judging from the playset over to the right which seems better maintained than the rest, I'm guessing that perhaps the course property is now used by the Christian school which shares the strip with the old Hola and the Jamacian restaurant. If so, it's kind of a shame the old greens are gone. It would be really cool to be able to say "My school's playground is a Putt-Putt course!" (And it would be extra super cool if it was one of the ones with the windmills and dinosaurs..)

(Hat tip to commenter Ken).

The Kroger Sav-On at Decker Mall was the first Kroger I ever encountered. It opened while I was in high-school, and was really different from the grocery stores I was accustomed to before it arrived.

Firstly, it was quite large. This was before Wal-Mart super centers or anything like that, and I was used to stores the size of a Colonial, Piggly Wiggly or A & P. This store was noticably larger than any of those.

Secondly, it was more diverse. Some of the largeness was due to it having a built-in pharmacy, which none of the other stores did, but a good bit of it was from selling more than food. In the beginning, the place seemed almost like a mini department store to me, where you could never be sure just what you might find. For instance, I got the very first microwave oven I ever bought from the (now also closed) Kroger at Surfside Beach which also dates from this era, and I still recall how bemused I was to have found such a thing at a grocery store.

Thirdly, it was open late. I don't believe this store was ever 24 hours like the Forest & Beltline store, but it was open a good bit later than I was used to, and the idea that I could pop out at 10pm and buy something was very enticing. (Especially as I was starting to drive and then drive at night).

For a long time, this store, and Target carried Decker Mall. Then when the mall began to decline to the point that you either parked near Kroger or near Target because there was nothing interesting in-between, they locked the doors on the mall side of the store and made everyone come in the front. Finally, when the flight from the Decker corridor to Two Notch began and strengthened, both Kroger and Target moved into new stores, Kroger's in Sparkleberry Square, Target's just slightly east of that. I have never fully understood the demographic logic of that. Yes, the area is growing, and a new store there will make money, but it's not like everybody near Decker suddenly died -- the population that was there is still there. Of course, this store doesn't really fit in with Kroger's current look (which is, I admit, quite nice) and would have needed re-working at some point anyway. (I keep expecting the Forest & Beltline store to either close or remodel..)

Interestingly, and somewhat unexpectedly, Decker Mall survived the move of both anchors and continues to live on, mainly on the strength of the DMV, I suspect, but there actually are a few other ongoing operations there as well.

UPDATE 29 March 2010: The clouds were so nice today, I couldn't resist getting and adding some better shots above.

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Updated closing date due to research by commenter Andrew.

A while back I realized that I had over 30 years of 35mm negatives that were going to need to be digitized at some point, not to mention 126 Instamatic and 620 Brownie negatives dating into the 1960s. I figured I could nickle & dime myself to death gradually getting them scanned at Ritz or Photoworks.com, or I could bite the bullet, get a negative scanner and do it myself. I ended up with this Nikon negative scanner, and on the whole I've been quite happy with it. The resolution is much higher than I was getting from commercial scanning, though it also takes much longer to scan a roll of negatives than I was expecting.

So anyway, my sister dug up some old negatives from a 1987 signing for her first book, and asked me to scan them. As soon as I saw where the signing was, I knew I was going to want to use some of them here. My second question to her, after asking if I could use the pictures was whether she wanted her name and face blurred, but on reflection that a pretty stupid one. After all, she is an award winning children's book author with her own web site who, as all authors do, would like you to know her name and buy her books, especially her latest one!

Chapter Two Books was in Trenholm Plaza most of the time I was growing up. It was a fairly small storefront on the Edisto/Holligan's side of the plaza next to the barber shop. In the days when I would get $3.00 for mowing the lawn, I would take the money down there and buy a new Tom Swift, Jr. book. Unlike Browz-A-Bit and Walden's at Dutch Square, science-fiction was not a major category here, and the selection of SF paperbacks (and paperbacks vs hardbacks in general), was pretty small, so aside from Tom Swift, I usually ended up spending my strictly limited funds at one of those stores rather than here, but I do distinctly remember that Chapter Two sold me the last $0.50 paperback I ever saw, a copy of Robert Heinlein's classic Young Adult novel Farmer In the Sky.

Although it was not the intention of any of these shots, if you look out the windows (on the click-through versions especially), you can see a good bit of the old Trenholm Plaza landscape: Tapp's Twig, The Banker's Note, A & P and Standard Federal. By this time the original "steeple" A & P had been torn down and replaced with a more modern design (which was itself torn down for Publix), and the current Books-A-Million location was several storefronts.

I'm not sure exactly when Chapter Two closed. If I didn't have this evidence that it was still there in 1987, I would have guessed then or earlier. In any event, I believe it was gone before Books-A-Million arrived, and I have the vague feeling that the owner decided to retire and close the shop.

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Here's another vacancy in the little strip in the Wal-Mart plaza off of Forest Drive at I-77. It's right down the sidewalk from the (still vacant) Stevie B's PIzza and Check N Go and across the parking lot from the former Shoe Carnival.

Commenter "Nobody" says that as of a few days ago, the storefront had both Closed For Remodeling and non-payment of rent signs posted, presumably by different parties. As of today, it is innocent of any signs, but the interior has been completely cleaned out. I have to admit that I know almost nothing about modern video games, so I don't know if there are systemic factors here as in the video rental market, or if this is just a case of the generally bad economy.

(Hat tip to commenter "Nobody".)

B & B Sports Lounge or simply B & B's if you go by the roof sign, is on Percival Road just east of the triangular intersection of Percival with Old Percival, and looks to have been out of business for a good while. At any rate, it's not listed in the 1998 phonebook.

Curiously, the only google hits I get for 2417 Percival Road are for a place called Mary J's which is also not in the current or 1998 phonebook..

UPDATE 4 May 2019 -- This lot appears to be in the process of being cleared. The building which sat behind B & B (and which I did not include in the original picture) is now gone:

The LoopNet listing for the property (which partially shows the razed building) says the lot is off the market, so presumably someone bought it and will be doing something new there.