Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Welcome Facebook users 11 July 2017: I see a lot of hits on this old page from Facebook today. Welcome to Columbia Closings. Normally this site focuses on Columbia South Carolina, but there are some other Fernandina pages you may be interested in:

A1A Gas Mart, 816 South 8th Street (Fernandina Beach FL)

Amelia Con 2014, Fernandina Beach Florida

Amelia Con 2016, Fernandina Beach Florida

Island Cinema 7, 1132 14th Street (Fernandina Beach FL)

Kmart, 1525 Sadler Road (Fernandina Beach)

O'Kane's Irish Pub And Eatery, 318 Centre Street (Fernandina Beach)

Sonny's Real Pit Bar-B-Q 2742 South 8th Street, Fernandina Beach FL

Topsy's Downtown Gulf, 710 Centre Street (Fernandina Beach)

A1A Gas Mart, 816 South 8th Street (Fernandina Beach FL)

Indian River Fruit Stand, A1A (Yulee Florida)

And check the Alphabetical Closings page for other Florida references.

And now back to the original post:

Well, I'm on the road, and didn't get all the pictures I wanted to take done beforehand, so I'm going to throw in a few ringers this week.

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Some of my google hits give the name of this place as Casual Male XL, but the majority seem to go with Casual Male Big & Tall. Anyway, this place was on Two Notch Road in Dentsville, between the Hess station and FedEx-Kinkos. As I hate to shop for clothes, it was never really on my radar, but I noticed sometime after New Years that the storefront was vacant. I kept meaning to get a picture, but somehow never made it to the area at an opportune time, so finally when I found myself driving by one night, I decided I might as well get a shot then or forget about it.

This section of Two Notch has been iffy for several years, with the Wendy's and Shoney's buildings still vacant, and the recent departure of Floor It Now. On the other hand, the old Quincy's just got a nice new tenant, and Lowe's and Best Buy do bring a good bit of traffic to the area.

UPDATE 3 March 2012: I happened to notice that I had a fairly decent daytime picture of this place still in operation in the background of a Wendy's shot I took, so I am putting that at the top, over the original nighttime-only pic.

I had done a closing on this building, already operatiing as Shane's Rib Shack to remember it being a Pizza Hut and a Rising High.

It now appears that a third restaurant has gone under in this spot. I'm not 100% certain that it's gone for good, and there is a bit of room for hope in the fact that the phone has not been disconnected. The sign suggests that the closing is intended to be temporary, due to a gas leak, but I would say that more than enough time has gone by to correct that, so we'll have to see. I never ate at Shanes as ribs are yet another taste I didn't acquire, but I heard a number of people say good things about the place.

Thanks to commenter MB for the heads up.

UPDATE 7 Oct 2010 -- Zazby's is now open in this building (and has been for a while):

OK, does anybody know if this is right? Google suggests that 3601 Two Notch Road, which is in the block starting at Cushman Drive and going towards Dick Dyer was Carolina Parts Company, and I have a vague memory of a junkyard type place (which the Beware of The Dog sign would support).

However, I had noticed the lot as vacant several times driving and walking by in the past year or so -- except for a battered sign. The lot is apparently being cleared, and the sign is now gone, before I could get a picture of it, but my memory is that it was not a junkyard type sign. The name of the establishment had been obliterated but I think the top part of the sign was for Coke as if it were one of those Coke-subsidised signs you used to see all the time for restaurant names. Does anyone remember a restaurant, or anything that would have a Coke-sponsored sign at this site? Possibly from before Carolina Parts?

Just for fun, here are the recent traffic statistics for columbiaclosings.com. These are given in requests, and my understanding is that a page with multiple pictures will be ranked more highly since each request for the page generates a separate request for each picture. In each case, the most recent data is not accurate since the day, week, or month may not be over yet.

Daily Traffic:

Weekly Traffic:

Monthly Traffic:

For some reason, October was a very good month, and you can certainly see the impact of my three week vacation at the end of July and the start of August.

As to what draws people to the blog? Well, Godaddy's report claims that if a search engine gives query data, they list it in the report. I'm not sure what that means in terms of whether this includes google or yahoo or MSN or what. I particularly like numbers 10, 24 & 29:

I don't have a lot to say about R. M. Stork Brickyard -- if there weren't a plaque, I wouldn't even have the name. I do vaguely remember when it was in operation on Bethel Church Road however, and how the remnants fascinated me after it closed down.

Today the location, just down Bethel Church Road from Trenholm Park (heading towards Satchelford Road) seems a very unlikely one for an industrial operation, and I don't ever remember having seen the trucks going in and out that it would have taken to support the place. Certainly the traffic would be out of character with the neighboorhood now!

I assume this chimney was attached to a brick kiln. I think I remember some domed ones, though I may be conflating memories of Guignard Bricks just across the Blossom Street Bridge. After lying fallow for a number of years, the place was developed into condos, which look to be fairly nice. The chimney now stands in front of the condo's swimming pool and lodge.

I don't know much about Mattress Place, in fact without Google I wouldn't even know the name of this storefront, but I would notice it from time to time driving up and down Two Notch Road near Arcadia Lakes and the old Po' Folks (though on the opposite side of the street). It never really looked like it was thriving to me, but it lasted a good number of years despite all the other mattress stores in the Two Notch corridor.

Apparently it and the Glory Church on the same lot share the 6405 street number, so I'm unsure if the other google hit I get for that was in the mattress building, or the church building, but the address was also the home of the Quick Pick Community Thrift Store. I can recall seeing that and meaning to stop sooner or later, as you can often find some really neat stuff at thrift shops (I picked up a $9 bike for my niece recently..). I suspect that Goodwill locating on Decker took a lot of their business.

Back in the 1970s, our Mercury Comets and Ford Maverick spent a lot of time in Bob Andrews Motors's garage. The 70s (for those of you fortunate enough not to remember) were the decade when nothing worked (and we had disco!), and were possibly the rock bottom era for American cars (until now).

My parents always bought cars with 3-on-the-tree manual transmissions as that was how they had learned to drive, and what they enjoyed driving. Unfortunately at some point in the 70s, Ford forgot how to build these (which didn't keep them from selling them..), and the local dealer forgot how to fix them. In fact although they didn't say much, at this remove I'm pretty sure my parents thought the dealership's service department was incompetent about a lot of stuff. Of course there's only so much you can do with a mid-70s Mercury Comet, but my folks always thought Andrews dealt fairly with them, and he generally got the cars back on the road.

Eventually, my parents decided that Detroit had failed the "fool me once, fool me twice.." test and we moved on to Toyotas which hardly ever broke down, and which had competent dealer service departments so we didn't get to Harden Street any more. Still, I'm kind of sad to see the old Andrews site empty (though glad that the business survives on Two Notch). Hopefully something will go into the interestingly shaped existing building rather than knocking it down.

UPDATE 20 March 2010 -- Here's some better pictures of the building:

UPDATE 29 July 2010 -- The old building at 1111 Harden Street has been demolished:

Got 1.5 million dollars for a restaurant? If so, Columbia icon Jaco's on Bluff Road could be yours.

I believe the place used to be a Texaco filling station at some point in its life, and I recall reading a story on the place years ago, in The State, I think, about how the place used to blow off Texaco coporate during its national "always a clean restroom at Texaco" campaign. I'm sure the story was apocryphal, and was presented as such, with the point being a certain devil-may-care spirit about the place.

Unfortunately I can't say from experience as this is yet another of the many Columbia places that go on the blocks before I get around to visiting. I suppose part of it is that I rarely get down that way except for The State Fair, and traffic makes it somewhere you wouldn't even think of stopping then. On the other hand, it may not be too late. I know they had a Superbowl party, so they may be keeping the business open until they get a buyer.

UPDATE 16 May 2017 -- According to The State, Jaco's has been sold and closed on 13 May 2017. I am updating the post title with that information.

UPDATE 3 February 2023 -- Torn down and rebuilt as J's Corner:

Also adding a map icon. (And I note that the address is now listed as 1015 Rosewood Drive rather than 638 Bluff Road).

When they initially started out, I liked Ryan's a good bit. When I was living & working in Fayetteville, there were a couple of years where I ate lunch at Ryan's several times a week. I particularly enjoyed the salad bar, which I believe they had dubbed The Mega-Bar because it had peanuts instead of sunflower seeds and wheels of cheddar slices of which went well with the large, hot yeast rolls. About the only drawback was that the lettuce was shredded rather than torn.

After I left Fayetteville, it was a number of years before I ate at a Ryan's again. As it happened, I was in Georgetown one afternoon and stopped in at the US-707 location. I'm afraid I found it much less appealing that I had remembered. I found the chairs clunky and uncomfortable and the salad bar was much diminished, with no cheese, rolls or peanuts. I later talked to a friend of mine who at the time was writing cash-register and point-of-sale software for the restaurant industry, and he said he had heard that the owners of the Ryan's brand were unhappy and felt that a number of their franchises had trashed the brand's reputation. (Their solution was to open a new chain called Fire Mountain to go into areas where the Ryan's name was bad).

Anyway, I don't know exactly what happened to this Ryan's on Saint Andrews. It may have been an exemplary store which simply suffered from the location and the chain's falling fortunes, but whatever reason, the building is now not even a restaurant at all, but has been converted to offices.