Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I've written about this building before, but it looks like it's about to go vacant again. It was always something of an odd fit to see mattresses in a store that was obviously a fast-food joint, but it was kind of endearing as well.

I'm not sure where Awesome is moving to, but whatever happens, Two Notch Road will not be bereft of mattress stores..

UPDATE 3 June 2010 -- Hola Mexico Mexican restaurant will be moving into the building:

Here's yet another of Columbia's (or West Columbia's in this case) former Eckerd Drugs locations, and like a number of former drugstores in the area, it's been re-purposed as a discount store, a Dollar General in this case. I didn't get any front-on shots because people were in and out constantly while I was parked next door at Walgreens, but it's the standard Eckerds look.

I'm not sure when the Walgreens went in, but its being there may have something to do with why this Eckerds did not continue life as a Rite Aid.

UPDATE 13 May 2011: Changed the closing date in the post title based on commenter Andrew's research.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

You finally took down that 2009 calendar, and don't have anything to replace it with? Or you haven't even taken down 2009 yet?

Well, you can still get your 2010 Columbia Closings Wall Calendar or your 2010 Pawleys Island Wall Calendar.

After all, it'll be 2010 all year, and 2009's not coming back!

PowerOne Computer Warehouse was a rebuilt PC store that I believe opened on Saturday 29 August 2009. I say that with some confidence, because I had taken a bunch of pictures of the nearby The Aquarium & Pet Shop on that day, and stopped in at PowerOne on my walk back over to Fuddruckers where I was eating lunch.

I found them in the midst of something of a mini-crisis because they had not intended to open on 29 August, but there was a printing error in all the flyers that were distributed in the paper forcing them to open several days before they were ready. This meant that almost nothing in the store had a price on it, and in many cases not even of description of the PCs processor speed, amount of RAM, OS version etc. It looked like they had some pretty good stuff in the store, but as I didn't really need anything, I didn't persue the prices of any the systems.

I don't know if the unplanned opening somewhat "wrong-footed" them as the Brits might say, but for whatever reason, they didn't make it to New Years.

I recall seeing Dugan's Sports Bar from time to time as a drove Bush River Road, but I don't know anything about it other than that it preceded PowerOne into the 1807 storefront.

UPDATE 4 Jan 2010: Commenter Jeff notes that home theater company Sound Advice was once in the space.

UPDATE 22 August 2012 -- It appears that the place is preparing to open as one of the many new (and controversial) "Internet Sweepstakes" operations in the Columbia area:

UPDATE 24 October -- Well the sweepstakes thing never happened; I believe the law came down on all of them before this one got opened. Anyway, it's Sissy's Furniture now.

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope your holidays were great, and that Santa was good to you!

Anyway..

I first did a closing on this building when it had just ceased being Tiffany's Bakery in 2008. The place was vacant a good while after that, then Granville's moved in.

This story from The State suggests that the place opened in July of 2009, so it had about a six-month run. While generally upbeat, that story also has some ominous IRS issues to be worked through mentioned. Whether that had an impact on the place closing, I don't know.

Commenter Mike D. gave the initial notice in Have Your Say and when I drove by to take these pictures, the place still had a hopeful Closed For Private Partysign in the door. He reports that since these pictures, a For Sale sign has gone up. Too bad!

(Hat tip to Mike D., obviously)

UPDATE 4 Jan 2010: Fixed typo in street address.

UPDATE 8 Jan 2010: Added a picture I forgot earlier.

UPDATE 13 April 2010 -- It's now Conrad's:

OK, I've looked over each post I made during 2009, and these are the top 20 posts that either

a) I liked

b) Seemed significant to the area

c) Seemed to get a lot of feedback

The rule is that the post had to have been made this year, the subject of the post may have been gone for years or decades. These are in no particular order other than roughly the order the posts were made in.

1) Birds On A Wire

2) Sounds Familiar, Rosewood

3) Circuit City, Two Notch & Harbison

4) Guignard Bricks

5) Southern Gentleman's Strip Club

6) The Bounty, Sumter Highway

7) Waldenbooks, Dutch Square

8) The Market Restaurant

9) Luigi's Italian Kitchen

10) The Original Italian Pie, Forest Drive

11) The Village Bistro

12) Kmart, Dutch Square

13) The Myrtle Beach Pavilion

14) Hiller Hardware, Harden Street

15) Hurricane Hugo

16) Richland Mall Theater

17) Wade Hampton Hotel

18) Tasty Bake Shop

19) Bush River Mall

20) Le Petit Chateau

Happy New Year!

Video

Video

Video

The soggy aftermath at Forest Lake Shopping Center on the 26th:

Well, I was not actually going to make another post until the New Year, but I don't think I can let the Great Christmas Flood of 2009 pass without notice. As we headed out over the river and through the woods, we found out that in fact the river was over the woods this year.

As we tried to get to Trenholm Road, we found that creek (name unknown) was flooding Trenholm access from both Academy Way (first picture) and Sylvan Drive and that Eightmile Branch was flooding Gamewell Drive. Fortunately the WIllingham Drive bridge was still above water. At Forest Lake Shopping Center (Trenholm Road at Forest Drive) the Garden Center and Web Rawls Gallery in the old bank were flooded as was the whole of Forest Lake Park

In fact, water was coming over the Forest Lake Park embankment into Gills Creek at such great speed and volume that it made a line of waterfalls. As we watched, we saw several bits of flotsam & jetsam such as trash cans go over the falls. The park whirly-gig was entirely under water. We drove over to Zoe's parking lot, and I got some Quicktime video of the cataracts. There's not a lot of pictures because a) it was still raining cats and dogs & b) we were on our way out of town. By the time we got back mid-morning the 26th all the flood waters were gone though the Web Rawls and Garden Center folks were still working at recovery.

I think that makes two "100 year" floods here in the last 15 years..

UPDATE 28 December 2009: D'Oh! Video links were wrong, fixed now.

UPDATE 29 July 2010: Added the picture from 26 December.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Posting will be light to nonexistant for a bit.

Well, it seems that the second location of Mangia! Mangia! is now history. I believe I ate there only twice, once in West Columbia, and once, very recently, in the new Spears Creek location.

I don't recall much about the West Columbia visit, but I chose pizza at the Spears Creek venue, and found it pretty good. Not necessarily "drive almost to Elgin" good, but nice.

I have no idea what happened to the place, but I suspect the "drive to Elgin" factor did have something to do with it. In the first place, "out of sight, out of mind" -- I only visited recently because I kept forgetting that the place existed. Second, timing. It's clear that the area is going to experience the eastward drift of the metro area as the Two Notch Corridor and Sandhills already have, but the recession has probably pushed that back, and the density just wasn't there yet. Or I could be completely wrong, though it sounds like the new operation there, Shag Bistro is thinking along similar lines, in antipation of the dining business from the Verizon call center relocation..

Added bonus, interesting clouds and sunset driving back from Spears Creek.

(Hat Tip to commenter Stewart)

UPDATE 22 February 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon. Also adding suite number to the title.

I've never been great at video games, though I used to go to arcades pretty often. Galaga is my favorite, and the one I was/am best at, though that "best" was no great shakes on an absolute scale. I never did make the transiton from arcade games to computer/console/online games and so have never been in a store like Game Crazy. As far as I can tell from googling around, the chain has not declared bankruptcy or made the news for massive store closings, so I guess this closing can be chalked up to local conditions probably exacerbated by the recession in general. Now if they could only put some place you could get coffee and a snack in that little strip..

(Hat tip to commenter Jason)

UPDATE 28 Oct 2010 -- This place is nearly ready to re-open as a GameStop (In fact if they made the opening date promised on their sign, they are open now):