Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well this was a bit unexpected. I had been planning for a while to do a closing on Quncy's, but when I went there today to take the picture, I found the successor business, Stiletto's strip club had just closed down as well.

Quincy's Family Steakhouse was part of the second or third wave of steakhouses to hit Columbia, and at its peak, the best of breed in my opinion. The first wave consisted of places like Ponderosa Steak Barn about which I mean to do a post someday, while the second wave (or late first, I haven't decided) was places like Western Steer & Western Sizzling.

Quincy's was a very appealing operation for family Sunday lunches, and we ate there almost exclusively on Sunday for a number of years. You would go in, get in line, pick out your silverware and make your order which would be brought out with reasonable promptness. I thought they had a very good burger (which fewer places do well than you would expect), and their salad bar was unquestionably the best in Columbia. The waitresses were all friendly, and came to know and greet "the regulars". The only fly in the ointment was that whatever mechanism they used to wash the silverware wasn't very efficient, and you always ended up having to go through several knives and forks before coming up with unspotted ones.

I liked Quincy's well enough that when my employer started sending me to various cities around the South East, I would take the little list of "Our Other Locations" that used to be in a stand by your way out, to have somewhere familiar to eat when I travelled. (In practice, it would usually work out that either I didn't get to pick where we ate, or we would end up working so late that it was Denny's or nowhere..). I started noticing too that all Quincy's were not alike. The one on Two Notch was definitely the best one in Columbia, much better than the one on Forest Drive, and a bit better than the one off I-26 & US-378. The one in Surfside Beach was very good, the one in Florence, not so much.

Naturally like any chain with a generally winning concept, they started to tinker with it. First, the salad bar started to decline. They took the large wedges of chedder and pepper-jack cheese off, and would start skipping very basic things, like onions, more and more often. Then they decided that the "honor system" had to go. The initial concept was you got your ticket and paid on your way out. The new system was that you had to pay at the end of the ordering line. I suppose it reduced shrinkage some, and obviated the need for another employee and register stand at the door, but it also slowed up the line, and made it seem that you weren't quite trusted to pay for your food. Real decline set in after this, and the chain obviously realized it with their somewhat desperate ad campaigns for The Big, Fat Yeast Roll. The rolls were actually pretty good, but you want to think several times before launching a restaurant ad campaign in which the words "big" and "fat" play prominent roles.

I think the Forest Drive location was the first in Columbia to go, with Two Notch being the last. I believe the chain is still in business and has a few stores left, but I haven't seen one in several years.

I forget what moved into the Two Notch building after Quincy's, but it didn't last too long, and I think the building sat vacant a while before becoming Stiletto's. That brief-lived operation had a sign with a very shapely set of legs, the feet adorned with the aforementioned footware. I'm pretty sure I saw the sign as recently as last week, but I can't say for certain. The sign also mentioned that, like Quincy's, they had steaks on the menu, but I suspect "the sizzle" was more their stock in trade.

UPDATE 9 May 2008: New construction is going on at the old Quincy's/Stiletto's

Looks like it will be a "Harbor Inn", which either means that there will be two Harbor Inns within a mile or so of each other on Two Notch, or that the one in front of Bi-Lo (in the old Ryan's building) will be moving here.

UPDATE 22 March 2010: Added full street address (and some tags)

I recall that when I was around 6 or 7, Midlands Plaza ran a promotion to get shoppers out during the weekend. There was some sort of ride to entice the children, and the whole thing was promoted on WIS radio. Midlands wasn't where we normally shopped, but I bugged my mother until she took me out to experience the much ballyhooed kiddy-ride. I can't remember what it was now except that it was small, groundbased and freestanding (to make it easier to transport from promotion to promotion, I suppose). I have the impression that it was supposed to hop around the parking lot, but really it didn't matter, because they could not get it started. Apparently there was a gas motor in there somewhere, because they kept pulling on a lawn-mower-like starting cord, and occasionaly the thing would sputter a few strokes, but it would never fire up. And that is a metaphor for the history of Midlands Plaza.

I don't know if this is actually the case, but Midlands Plaza seems to have been conceived as a sister site to Trenholm Plaza (perhaps even the reverse was true?), with a Post Office and A&P anchoring a choice corner site with easy access from major roads, but for some reason the place exhibited a failure-to-thrive for most of the period I can remember. Certainly it was in bad shape by the 70s, bottomed out in the 80s, and has currently come to terms with a post-retail mode of operation.

It is rather appropriate that A&P was the anchor store for Midlands, since that chain itself underwent a similar experience during the same time period. It used to be the case that you could find A&P's distinctive, steeple capped, stores all around Columbia and other area cities. You can still often find the buildings, but the chain itself has withered away. I think part of it was the fact that while grocery stores were getting bigger and bigger, A&P was entrenched in small sites, and didn't make any effort to build bigger until they had finally been leap-frogged by newer chains. Of course for that to happen bespeaks a certain complacency at the management level, perhaps best exemplified by the last A&P advertising campaign that I can recall: A&P: Putting Price & Pride Together Again. It's always risky to run a "we were wrong" campain, and much more so to run a lame "we were wrong" campaign.

After the failure of that campaign, and the closure of the stores at Trenholm & Midlands Plazas, the only other A&P activity I saw in South Carolina was the attempt to establish a "Supercenter" in North Myrtle Beach, something that might have worked if they had done it before Kroger and other big stores moved in, but which in the event went under after no more than a few years. So, with over a hundred years in business, the legacy of A&P, at least in South Carolina, is the (confusing to youngsters, I'm sure) reference in the Waitresses classic "Christmas Wrapping":

A&P has pride in me with the world's smallest turkey..

The store at Trenholm Plaza was torn down and replaced with a Publix, the store at Midlands Plaza became, for a time, Giant Food World (invoking nightmare images of boxcar sized potatoes, and Sequoia-ish brocolli), then I think became a furniture store and finally became empty (but the steeple and wether-vane have withstood the ravages of the years..)

UPDATE: Added picture of old A&P on Sunset Drive.
UPDATE: Added picture of old (but re-roofed & de-steepled) A&P on the Charleston Highway

UPDATE 4 April 2013 -- Well, I wish I had made totally separate posts for all the old A&P buildings, but I was still kind of feeling my way along way back in 2008. That aside, the Midlands Shopping Center A&P building is now gone. Below are pictures from mid 2012 and then March 2013:

I put an ad for columbiaclosings.com on the Free Times site today, and I see it's already brought a number of people in.

Welcome!

This is a blog about businesses (mostly in Columbia) which are no longer around. You can take a look at the Mission Statement or the Alphabetical List of Closings or just browse the archives.

I was just reminded today that the Hollywood Video attached to the Food Lion plaza on Two Notch Road near Dick Dyer Toyota is gone. A quick google reveals that the whole chain is in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, and is closing "underperforming" stores. It appears that they made a fatal mistake in trying to buy their nearest competitor and become a solid #2 to Blockbuster's #1. I think the handwriting is on the wall for most video rental places. If it's not Netflix, it will be Internet or cable-box downloads (legal or not..)

On the other hand, when Hollywood closes a store, it has a big "to the bare walls" sale, which is a nice touch.

UPDATE 23 October 2009: Added the street address (3810) to the post title

UPDATE 20 December 2011 -- Well, something has finally moved into this space, HomeSmart, which seems to be a household furniture and electronics rental operation:

UPDATE 12 October 2020: Updating tags and adding map icon.

In principle, I should like Rising High, since it is sort of a local version of The Atlanta Bread Company or Panera Bread, and I like both of those operations (in general, but see my post about ABC at Sandhills..). In practice I never really found the sandwich or other food item that could make this place a regular stop for me. The sandwich which came closest, The Sundrenched was a bit too artichokey. The deck was a nice idea in principle, but I found that when it wasn't too hot, or too cold to use it, I tended to get panhandled by passers-by.

I'm unsure if the building was built for Rising High. I remember The Villa being in about that location before it closed. At any rate, I think a combination of things did in this location. First and foremost was the interminable Harden Street revamping which also cost us The Parthenon. I believe that, combined with the fact that the chain was at the same time trying to establish a new location on Beltline Blvd (where Shane's Ribs now is) just put too much stress on the operation.

The building now hosts The Congaree Grill, an operation I have yet to visit.

The Pizza Hut on Broad River Road found itself in a less than ideal location after the implosion of Service Merchandise and the downscaling of Dutch Square. Still they hung on until they had a chance to move to the new Wal-Mart location on Bush River Road, which they have now done.

I can only remember eating there a few times over the years. It's interesting to me how during the time I've been buying my own meals, Pizza Hut has gone from being a "nice" place to eat to a sub-par fast-food experience. They have always had a problem over the years with the customer being able to figure out whether to pay the server or pay at the register, but they used to have a fairly good food and reasonable service.

It seemed to me that the food started going down-hill in the 90s, and the service, including the kitchen staff followed quickly. For me the final straw was when a lot of locations started serving "fountain" ice tea instead of fresh brewed. I recall being at a location in Lauringburg NC, and sending my tea back as I could taste that there was "something wrong with it". The waiter commented "yeah, a lot of people say that since we switched." I was kind of flabbergasted that the store had an obvious problem which people were giving them feedback on, but about which they apparently did not care. The most recent time I stopped at a Pizza Hut was in Walterboro when I could find nothing else reasonable looking off of I-95 that was still open. The tables hadn't been wiped, I sat for 20 minutes without a drink or my order being taken, the ice tea was fountain, and the cook hadn't been taught how to cook the garlic bread orders (apparently there is an opening half-way through the oven where you are supposed to insert a garlic bread tray, but he ran it all the way through).

So, that's a bit of venting about Pizza Hut in general. It's not fair to put it on the Broad River one, but I don't think I'll be visiting the new location.

UPDATE 23 May 2011 -- Here's a picture of this Pizza Hut's new location in the Wal-Mart plaza on Bush River Road:

UPDATE 15 September 2012 -- The old Broad River Road building is now a title loan operation:

UPDATE 26 June 2023: Updating tags and adding map icon.

I think this is the first post I've written about a place where the doors are still open, but the writing is definitely on the wall for Sofa Express: Literally. And the writing says things like "Chapter 11 Bankruptcy" and "Store Closing Forever".

I'm not sure if this says anything about The Village At Sandhills, but this is the second place out there that I've seen close. On the other hand, the time you are most likely to get a new sofa is when you buy a new house, so it's more likely related to the housing market than Sandhills itself.

UPDATE 10 March 2010 -- Well, after being a "Haloween" store on a temporary basis, it looks like the long-term future for this space will be as another Gold's Gym:

(also added full street address to post title).

UPDATE 21 May 2010 -- Looks like this location is being used by Gold's for presale only. The actual gym will be in the neighboring former Ashley Furniture Homestore location

UPDATE 14 July 2010: Well, the presale (and temporary gym) is closed. The new Gold's in the former Ashley building is completely set up and running now, and this building is again empty.

UPDATE 25 April 2018 -- This location is now Value City Furniture:

Fran's was a small meat-and-three on Forest Drive almost across from Trenholm Plaza. They always appeared to me to do a good business though I only went there a few times myself. My opinion is that they tended to run out of most items very early in the evening. If you weren't there by 7pm, there was probably no point in going (seniors found it ideal..). Combining that with the fact that the layout was very crowded and that they had no booths, I decided years ago that Lizard's Thicket was preferable when I wanted down-home cooking.

The new restaurant going into the location will be called Zoes Kitchen (but with the little European dots above the "e" in "Zoes"). Looking at their web site, it appears that they are a regional chain and will be serving a "healthy" Greek-inspired menu. To be frank, I didn't see anything there that really looks appetizing to me.

UPDATE 6 Oct 2010 -- Well, Zoe's is open, and has been for a while. As I said above, the menu doesn't appeal to me in general, but the Greek salad is good (if pricey), and with the closure of Zorba's on Decker I do visit here for that every so often. The patio is nice in the spring and fall as well.

UPDATE 1 September 2022: Change date year from '08' to '2008' in title. Update tags and add map icon.

When I was small, going to a movie always meant going downtown. We didn't do it often, but Main Street had at least four theaters and Five Points had one. The way I remember it, this all began to change with the opening of the Richland Mall Theaters (which deserve their own post). By the time I was in high school and college, the action had mostly left Main Street, with Dutch Square, Spring Valley, Richland Mall and Columbia Mall all having multiplexes (Columbia Mall effectively had two multiplexes).

The Jefferson Square Theater was the last theater downtown to play first-run major movies after the rest of the Main Street theaters had either switched to kung-fu, hard-R grindhouse or closed their doors entirely. "Jefferson Square" itself is still there, more or less at the end of the old Main Street shopping district. The theater building is still there too, though I don't know what's in it today. The last movie I remember seeing there was "Fame" in 1982. Even at the time, it was unusual to go downtown, and we had trouble parking (another part of what killed downtown theaters). I recall being impressed with the setup, which was on a larger scale than a typical multiplex. There was even a balcony, though it was closed at that time. We all enjoyed the movie (it seems to have fallen off the cultural radar now, but was quite a sensation at the time) and agreed that it was a nice place to see it, but we never went back, and I saw some time later that the theater had closed its doors.

I understand now that the Columbia Film Society is trying to move their Nikleodeon Theater from Main Street behind the State House to one of the shuttered theaters on Main in front of the State House. I don't believe that they are talking about Jefferson Square, but it will be nice to see a downtown theater of any sort again.

UPDATE 4 May 08: Added pictures of the current Jefferson Square courtyard.

UPDATE 12 September 2009: Added the Jefferson Square ad for "Two People" from the 15 April 1973 State paper.

UPDATE 21 April 2013 -- Commenter William sends in the picture below saying:

The current tenant DHHS leveled the floor by pumping truck loads of self leveling concrete. I am sending you a pic of the old projection room from about 2 weeks ago [circa 1 March 2013 -- Ted]. When I first went up there parts of the projectors were still there and you could see out the "windows". But as you can see in this pic they have been removed completely and windows blocked.

UPDATE February 16 2014: Finally add the full street address to the post title.

Applegate's Landing was on Decker Blvd somewhat behind Zorba's and the current Chik-Fil-A location. At least that's the way I remember it, though it's hard to visualize it there looking at the land today. Applegate's Landing was a sort of semi-upscale casual restaurant, on the order of Bennigans, though I don't believe it was part of a chain. I think it opened sometime in the 70s while I was in high school, at least the only two times I went there, it was with high school friends (though the second visit was some time was after our graduation).

As I recall, their main claim to fame, at least the one which made it into most of their advertising was that their salad bar was set up in the bed of a Ford Model-A pick-up truck. I'm pretty sure it really was an authentic Model-A, though it was mostly gutted. As well as the standard steaks, burgers and pasta dishes, they also had pan pizza, which they would bring to your table still in the pan. I liked my first visit well enough, but the prices were a bit high for me at the time (considering that I had no job..), and I didn't bother to go back until several years later. I had myself all set for the pan-pizza that second time only to find that they had revamped the menu and dropped that item. After that, it was again some years before I suggested the place to a group only to be informed that it had gone under. I'm not sure if this was for Applegate's specific reasons, or if it was the harbinger of the decline of the Decker corridor. At any rate, the building sat there for several years with no longer any clear way to get to it and was finally torn down. I don't know what happened to the Model-A..

UPDATE: I originally had the name of this restaurant wrong as "Appleby's Landing". I have corrected it to "Applegate's Landing" based on the comments. Thanks!

UPDATE 14 Feb 09: Commenter Midnight Rambler sent in a scan of an old Applegate's coupon, and I have posted it above.

UPDATE 12 April 2010: Added full street address to post title.