Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

While their closing note is hopeful, the real estate sign in the window and their recent facebook traffic is not. It looks like this combination Bruster's Real Ice Cream and Nathan's Famous on Columbiana Drive is gone.

I don't think I've ever had a Nathan's frank, but the few times I've had Bruster's ice cream, it's been perfectly fine. I do rather question their no-dining-room concept. I think that hurt the one on Beltline and the one in Murrells Inlet. This one actually seems to have more in the way of picnic tables and outside benches than those did though. I wonder too if some of these Columbiana/Harbison places are a victim of the Yogi Berra Effect:

Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

It was not a particularly peak time when I took these pix, and it was still a bit of a wait to turn left into the complex -- and that's when I had made it that far. Another trip to look into the reports of Chick-Fil-A closing in the mall got aborted when I came down the hill from St. Andrews Road and saw the backup from Bowers Parkway on -- I just pulled a you-ie and 180-ed out of there..

(Hat tip to commenter Mike)

UPDATE 3 October 2018 -- As mentioned by commenter Tom, and as you can (barely) see in the picture below, this is now a Tony's Pizza:

UPDATE 30 August 2021: Updating tags.

I'm pretty sure that when I first became aware of TCBY, their advertising slogan was This Can't Be Yogurt!. That's because at the time(I'm thinking maybe mid 1970s), yogurt, to the extent that anybody knew what it was at all, was thought of as a sour-ish dairy ingredient, something along the lines of sour cream or cheese. Certainly not something you would eat by itself, or for desert.

That certainly changed over the years, and gradually it seemed that the TCBY slogan became The Country's Best Yogurt!. Personally, while I like non-frozen yogurt, I never really was a huge fro-yo fan, and in particular if I walk into a shop and every spigot is "low" or "no" fat, I walk out again. Give me some high fat ice cream or soft-serv instead..

At any rate, this TCBY location hung on in the shopping center at the corner of Lake Murray Boulevard and Columbiana Drive for a good few years after the anchor Piggly Wiggly closed. I'm not sure of the exact date, but given that it was reported early in January 2013, the end of 2012 makes sense.

(Hat tip to commenter Soxinsc)

I'm not when this Bi-Lo closed, but it's listed in the February 1997 phonebook and was gone by the mid 2000s. Actually, I'm not entirely sure it closed, as the Bi-Lo on Saint Andrews Road is fairly new -- perhaps it relocated to there.

It was apparently replaced by two stores, an A C Moore craft store in most of the space, and Total Wine in the rest.

There has been a fair bit of churn in this plaza (which fronts on both Harbison and Columbiana). Over the years I've featured Computer Renaissance, and Gold's Gym, but there are a number I never got around to.

UPDATE 20 May 2012: Added the store number and exact closing date to the post title based on information from commenters Andrew & Irmojeff.

(The pictures aren't that great -- I was shooting ISO 3200, when I could have gotten by with 1600 or even 800).

The State says that this Abercrombie & Fitch in Columbiana Mall shuttered on 14 January 2012 as part of a bad-economy driven process that has already closed the King Street store in Charleston, and will close the Greenville store this weekend (28 January 2012). [The Myrtle Beach store in Coastal Grand Mall will remain open for now].

A&F is not a store I've ever entered, though I was pretty sure they sell clothes, and a glance at their web site confirms that. The only association I have with the name is an old joke/shaggy-dog-story that I heard parts of in the 70s that ended with

You can call me X, you can call me Y, but you doesn't has to call me Abercrombie!

Apparently the mall will make good this loss when a store called Love Culture opens this summer. This is another clothing store, but apparently for women only. The current tagline on their site

On the hunt for cute clothes!

and the two somewhat campy, retro graphics suggest a fairly young demo.

I don't know how I suffered this mental lapse, but somehow I convinced myself that on the day after Christmas, the Christmas rush would be over, and it would once more be safe to hit the Harbison area. Bad call!

I came up Harbison from Saint Andrews Road, and that wasn't so bad. Neither was getting into the circle for Columbiana Centre. Getting out was the hard part. It took me half an hour to merge into the counterclockwise outbound traffic and work my way to the Columbiana Drive exit. In between arriving and leaving, the mall itself was as packed as I've ever seen any mall. I guess I have been "spoiled" by the nearly empty expanses of Richland Mall, Columbia Mall and Dutch Square. I guess that makes Columbiana Centre Columbia's success story, but it doesn't make me want to go there again any time soon..

At any rate, Payless Shoe Source were in their final few days and were selling everything down to the store fixtures in preparation for clothing store Forever 21 to expand into their spot. In years past, it's always seemed to me that shoe stores are the most over-representated category in malls, but perhaps that's now changing.

UPDATE 27 February 2019: Add tags and map icon.

(Hat tip to commenter Dustin)

Here's another vacancy at The Shops At Columbiana Crossing. This one seems to have happened in 2009, and as far as I can tell, Sosi did not move elsewhere.

I find it a little curious that this strip does not seem to update either the storefront marquees or their road-side sign...

Well, it's back to the Shops At Columbiana Crossing today. From their web site Fleet Feet Sports appears to be an athletic shoe and running wear store, which pretty much rules it out as a place I would ever visit, but they had quite a nice little space in this Columbiana Drive storefront. I particularly like the curvy wood (or faux wood) flooring and the somewhat canted counter.

In late September they relocated, fleetly, but probably not on foot, to a much larger space at 945 Lake Murray Boulevard next to Bruegger's.

I've written here before about The Shops At Columbiana Crossing though not by name. It's a fairly new strip mall behind Columbiana Mall, and when it showed up here before, it was for D's Wings.

Great Wraps was several suites north of D's in a much smaller space. I've never really tried a "wrap" (other than burritos, I suppose), but I don't think it would be for me as bread is a big part of the sandwich experience. Nonetheless they seem very popular lately, though in this case, perhaps not enough so to brave Harbison area traffic.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

This Piggly Wiggly was in the High Point Centre shopping center at the north-east corner of Lake Murray Boulevard and Columbiana Drive. As far as I can tell, it closed in 2009, and seems to have pretty well put-paid to the whole plaza in so doing. I rarely get over to Lake Murray Boulevard (as you can see here, I still haven't managed to make it to this Pig in the daytime..) so I don't know the market too well, but this closing seems a bit odd to me.

This is one of the newer, larger, Pigs, so it's not one of the tiny old stores that they are trying to transition out of, and there's certainly no lack of traffic in the Harbison area. In fact, this store sounds as though it were a flagship of sorts, at least this story from 2005 paints it as the store chosen to do the public launch for PW's new "Pay By Touch" system.

This LoopNet listing has a daytime picture of the store with Pig branding (and confirms that it was built in 1994, which still seems pretty recent to me).

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Update closing date to 2 Feb 2008 based on comments.

UPDATE 22 June 2021 -- Now a Stars & Strikes bowling and fun center:

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

Spinnaker's was at one time a fairly popular casual dining restaurant along the lines of Bennigan's or TGI Friday's. To differentiate themselves from the casual pack, they had two branding gimmicks.

First, they would generally locate as part of a mall rather than in a free-standing building, and second, they would bake the complimentary table bread in a glazed terra-cotta flower pot and bring it still in the hot pot to your table.

When I started working in Augusta, Regency Mall was already on the way down, and Augusta Mall was in its prime with a Spinnaker's on the Rich's side of the mall. On the Grand Strand, Spinnaker's had locations at both Briarcliff Mall (now Myrtle Beach Mall) and Inlet Square. In fact, I blame the loss of Spinnaker's at Inlet Square for the start of that unhappy mall's long (and continuing) downward spiral as the space was never re-leased.

The Inlet Square closing was the first one I noticed for Spinnaker's, and my memory is that it was fairly early on, perhaps in the early 90s. After that, it seemed as though every time I drove by a former location, it was gone. I believe the Briarcliff location closed next, followed by the Augusta one. According to The State's archives, this location at Columbiana Centre was open as recently as November 2001. At least one location was open as recently as November 2009 (picture also here). I'm thinking that one lived on as a legacy on the strength of the local operators as I can't seem to find any corporate site for the chain.

While I don't know why Spinnaker's went into decline, I can only say that I personally found it rather average. In particular, I recall two things: The French Onion Soup was chicken based rather than beef based, making it distinctly sub-standard in my opinion, and the Flower Pot Bread was a better concept than actuality as it tended to stick to the pot giving you a mangled loaf when you tried to get it out and was actually a very bland and uninspired recipie.

Until quite recently, the interior mall corridor at Columbia Centre still had the doors into the vacant Spinnaker's space. Within the last year, they have covered the whole facade over with a mural of a walking girl sporting Rapunzel hair and vending machines.

UPDATE 2 March 2010 -- Here's the empty Spinnaker's spot in Inlet Square Mall in Murrells Inlet:

UPDATE 26 march 2010: Changed closing date to "mid-2000s" based on comments.

UPDATE 9 October 2017 -- Finally a new restaurant! This spot is now a Red Robin: