Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

OK, yesterday's post on Peddler Steak House certainly seemed to get some fond memories, so I'll try another defunct steakery today: The Chopping Block.

I used to notice The Chopping Block driving I-20 west. The lot butts against the Interstate just after the Economy Inn, and there used to be some signage visible there. I'm afraid I never ate there though. In fact, I don't think I ever went onto Briargate Circle at all until I started eating at Delhi Palace and figured out I could circle around behind the motel and come out at the stop light if I needed to turn left onto Broad River Road. I didn't even know there was a post office back there.

The ad (from the 1976 Southern Bell Yellow Pages) makes it sound like a pretty happening place. I was unaware of the nightly "entertainment" and extended "blockbuster" happy-hour. It all sounds rather upscale, which is not the current profile of the area ("upscale" has migrated to Harbison..) The address is now occupied by a mortgage company, and the buildings all appear to be fairly new, so I'm guessing the original restaurant building was torn down at some point.

Peddler Steak House, now Bar None seems to be a small southeastern chain of franchaised steak restaurants which started in Sanford NC on an amateur basis and was instituted as a restaurant in Southern Pines NC. I have never eaten in one myself, but when I was living in Fayetteville, I recall several people mentioning The Peddler very favorably.

I'm not sure when the one in 5 Points opened (the Yellow Pages ad is from the Southern Bell 1970 directory), but I don't think it lasted into the 80s as I don't ever recall it being an option when I was driving and picking restaurants on my own. (Not that I would have picked a steak place on my own anyway, but I think I would at least have been aware of it..)

UPDATE 14 September 2009: A lot of love for the place in the comments! And a correction on the closing date, so I have updated the post title to say "early 90s" rather than "1970s".. My poor sense of passing time strikes again!

UPDATE 16 September 2009: Added Poor Richard's to the post title due to information in the comments.

The Sunset Drive-In was at the top of the hill where Sunset Drive turns into River Road. The drive-in wasn't actually on Sunset Drive, but was, I believe on the intersecting Clemnet Road. The site is now a church, and as far as I can tell, nothing of the drive-in remains.

The theater ad comes from The State on 15 April 1973, and the place had apparently already gone porno by that time. I believe it stayed X-rated until it closed. I'm a bit hazy about when that was, but I don't think it lasted into the 1990s.

This space, to the right of Barnes & Noble on the lower level of Richland Mall was the mall's drugstore, Eckerd Drugs.

I'm trying to remember if the original Richland Mall had a drug store and I don't think it did. Eckerd's came in with the enclosed Richland Fashion Mall stage, and may have ended there. I don't think it made it to the Midtown at Forest Acres stage, but I'm not sure exactly when that started, and I refuse to call the mall that anyway.

It certainly did not make it as late as the Rite-Aid buyout of Eckerd's. I'm not sure exactly when it closed, but I think it was the early 2000s. By that time, Eckerd's had already seen the writing on the wall which required corner stores, and had moved the Trenholm Plaza store to the current corner-equivalent location that RIte AId on Forest Drive now occupies. The Richland Mall store had no drive-through, and could never have one, and while the parking was as close to strip-mall parking as Richland Mall gets, it still wasn't as good as a real strip-mall.

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

Some time in the 1990s, I started a quest to find the best pizza in Columbia. I never really finished it as I was living out of town at the time, and my father and I fell into a routine of hitting The Parthenon on Saturdays when I was in town. (In fact, I'm pretty convinced that The Parthenon would have been the winner anyway as I've never had pizza here that beat it.)

Anway, during that process, I checked out Tony's on Knox Abbott, The Villa in Five Points, Pizza Cucina near Spring Valley and a number of places that don't come readily to mind right now. This building, now a real-estate office, was one that was on the list, but which I never got to. I went so far one night as to drive there with my father rather than hitting The Parthenon, but there didn't seem to be any obvious place to park, I didn't want to ask him to walk far, and the place (the name of which I have forgotten) actually looked rather uninviting, so we turned around. I think it changed hands not long after that.

This is one of the reasons I hate to give my address to anybody: They start sending you all sorts of nagging "When are you coming back?", "Big Sale!", "We've Moved!" junk mail. Some of them are even doing it by email now. I don't have anything against Jiffy Lube -- they seemed to change my oil just fine and I'm sure I'll use some store or other of theirs from time to time in the future; I just dislike having a "relationship" with most businesses.

At any rate, in this case the postcard is more honest than the signage at the store -- they haven't really "moved", the 7452 Two Notch store has been there a good while.

The Parklane store was in the next block from the old Sounds Familiar and right at a really awkward traffic light, though I doubt that had anything to do with the closure.

Driving by the other day, I noticed some activity at this building, and there was a service truck working there today as well, so apparently something will be going in there, though the property still seems to be up for sale.

The same link says the building was built in 1988, so with Southtrust apparently moving out in 1999, it was a bank for ten years. After that, though I'm not sure it was directly after that, some sort of computer business named SimplyConnected moved in and then moved to Parklane. I don't know why SouthTrust moved out originally, but by 2004 they had been bought by Wachovia, which has itself now been bought out by Wells Fargo.

The property is on a busy segment of Two Notch near the Alpine intersection, but is a little hard to get in and out of if you are headed east (though you can go down behind the place to get over to Alpine and the stop-light). I suspect banking industry conditions had more to do with the initial closure though.

Until fairly recently (by my standards..) there were two open air markets in the Northeast area. I've written about the one on Two Notch road near Home Depot (though it burned down before that was built) here.

The other one was on Decker almost at the intersection with Percival Road and continued for some years after the other one was gone, and I'm not sure what finally did it in though it can't have helped that Decker had several major grocery stores on it.

The way I recall it is that it was very "produce" oriented, and that the fresh vegetables were out front under a sort of shed structure which is now gone. You couldn't really call it a building, and it was not air-conditioned. I believe there was a real building behind the produce area though I'm not sure it was the one currently housing the auto-tint operation. I don't think we went to this place often if at all growing up, though I do recall stopping there several times on my own to pick up Vidalia onions for sandwiches.

I think the synagogue in Arcadia lakes hosts a farmers' market now, and I believe there is an open air market farther out Two Notch towards Big Lots, but you really don't see this type of place around Columbia much anymore.

I'm not sure when this place closed, so I don't know if it took a hit in the recent economy, or went before that. The web-site mentioned in the sign is already gone. All in all, like running a restaurant, I'm afraid running a used car lot seems to be a good way to end up on this site.

I don't really know anything about Gamecock Country, but I was at a karate graduation in this building recently, and thought it must have originally been something else. A bit of googling shows that the building has apparently changed hands twice in the last two years. Google also suggests that Gamecock Country was a sporting goods store.

UPDATE 6 Sep 2009: Added Smith's Hardware to post title based on the comments.