Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here's a little print, and advertising shop on Broad River Road, more or less across the street from Boozer Shopping Center and next to the previous location of Palmetto Parent Magazine.

This archived version of their web site says they were established in 1985, and apparently some time around 2005, they were bought out by ASEC Graphics Services, or at least their former site started redirecting to that one..

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Carolina MoneySaver (or Carolina Money$aver) if I'm recalling right was one of those little "only classifieds" papers you would find around town in various lobbies and foyers. I think I saw it most often at Constan Carwash on Gervais.

The Internet has not been kind to such publications (or to the classified section of "regular" newspapers). In fact it has basically wiped them out. Why would you pay to place an ad in such a paper when you know that few people would see the paper itself, much less leaf through all the ads when you could instead list on Craigslist for free knowing that people could use online-search to beeline to your listing?

The URL on the roadside sign still works, but now redirects to a Charlotte area MoneySaver niche on the PennySaver USA site. I believe that PennySaver was once sort of an umbrella for all those little regional ad papers, but now it seems to have more of a pure online focus.

Maybe someone should put this real estate listing on Craigslist..

UPDATE 7 January 2012: Added several new tenants to the post title. I believe Fresh Encounters LLC to be the oldest of those. The Secretary of State's office indicates that it organized in 1998 and dissolved in 2001. There's no actual indication of what it was. With that name, it could be anthing from an escort agency to a produce stand.

The other names are more clear, and Beds Plus is undoubtedly the mattress store referenced in the comments.

Originally, as I recall it, this was simply the Columbia Mall Theater, and opened about the same time as the mall itself. Compared to some of the other theaters in town, I don't have any really strong memories of the place. I know I saw what was pretty much the last 70s style Disney live-action movie there: The North Avenue Irregulars as well as one of Disney's periodic re-issues of The Jungle Book and the first run of The Rescuers Down Under. (Yeah, I like Disney). I also remember trying to go there for a James Bond flick, one of the later Moore ones, and finding it sold out, a pretty rare experience back then.

At some point after I moved out of town, the Mall started to decline, and the theaters actually went under (along with the nearby Capitol Centre Theater). After that, a company called Phoenix Theaters re-opened the theater, which was sort of their shtick "phoenix from the ashes"/"new theater from old". I can't find out a lot about them because every google search turns up theaters in Phoenix Arizona, but this might be their web site. If it is, they have downsized considerably. At any rate, I don't think the Phoenix incarnation lasted too long here in Columbia. I recall seeing one movie under that regime (they had the latest showtimes) and not being too impressed with the theater (or the movie as I can't now recall what it was).

After that, I think the theaters closed again, and remodeled along stadium lines, which was the latest gimmick several years ago (and is an improvement, I have to admit). I'm struggling to think of any movie I saw there after the conversion, and I don't think there is one -- by that time, I had switched mostly to Richland Mall and Forest Drive as my default theaters.

I've lost the hat tip for the commenter who pointed out this closure, and when they said it happened, but if you look closely, you can see a poster for The Darkest Hour a movie which opens on Christmas Day 2011, so it was very recent, and we can assume somewhat unexpected if they thought they would be showing that one.

UPDATE 3 July 2012 -- As the pictures below show, the place is now open again as Columbia Place Stadium Cinemas.

Getting ready to re-open (28 May 2012):

Open again (29 June 2012):

Surprisingly, given its location at the corner of Two Notch & Faust Street, this building was apparently once connected with a church or some sort of religious personage. I can dimly remember seeing the Merita store there, and Titlemax seems to have been the most recent tenant, showing up in the February 2007 phonebook, but not thereafter. According to Richland County the place is currently owned by Midland Holding Corp who are apparently trying to sell it.

The lot is also home to a 30 Sheet Poster billboard, and if you click that link, you can see the place with the Merita store in operation, and a different paint job.

(Ad from February 2008 Bellsouth directory)

This section of Devine Street, between Beltline and Fort Jackson Boulevard, has always had a different feel from the rest of the street. This little strip is the one-time home of Le Petit Chateau and Martin's Coffee House. Note that Brassworks took more than one street address as the door pictured is clearly labeled as 4439 Devine Street.

The Brassworks building, with its striking second story of windowed space suspended on columns over the sidewalk and coming much closer to the street than the rest of the surrounding single story buildings has always caught my eye. I'm not entirely sure what one brings to a brass-smith, but I'm sure I don't have it, and so unfortunately never took the opportunity to stop by.

Commenter Alaska Jill sends in these pictures of Gibbes, saying:

Gibbes Machinery: The sunlit pictures were taken, I believe, in 1998. I used to park at the Gibbes lot as a USC student and knew those buildings were probably not going to be around much longer. Demolition started not long after those photos were taken. One morning in early 1999, we had snow in Columbia. I was a graduate assistant at the journalism school at the time, and had brought my camera with me to get some pictures of Columbia in the snow. From the steps of the Coliseum, I caught a couple pictures of the demolition in progress. An additional picture is taken from the former Gibbes lot.

The old Gibbes space is directly across Blossom Street from the Coliseum -- I'll have to consult some old directories to get the actual address. Right now it's the location of USC's new-ish "wellness center", which frankly sounds like a boondoggle with no educational function to me, but back in the day, Gibbes was there as a representative of the old "manufacturing" look of the Vista area. I never had a clear idea of what the machinery side of the business did, but the car lot was the only Volkswagen dealer in the Columbia area.

After USC got this property, the dealership moved to Broad River Road, just west of the river and either went under or sold out to the current tenant, Wray Mazda Volkswagen.

Take a good look at the second picture above. In the background, you can see The Towers and also the mini-mall building (muraled "Gamecock Clothing") which once held Robo's video arcade, Pappy's and a number of other small, student-oriented businesses. It has since been torn down to put in the Adesso condos.

UPDATE 17 December 2011: The building I tag as the "mini-mall" was actually Addams University Bookstore a separate building in the same general area. See the comments.

(Hat tip to Alaska Jill)

Well, the relocation of this title-loan company from Arcadia Lakes Shopping Center answers the question of what will next go into the old Carolina First Bank building at Columbia Mall.

I'm not sure it's a more accessible location, but the building is certainly classier.

UPDATE 20 December 2011: Originally stated the name of the strip mall as Arcadia Lakes Plaza which was wrong. I have corrected it to Arcadia Lakes Shopping Center.

I suspect that all three of these businesses were the same operation as the name still posted on the building Ca$h-N-Da$sh and went defunct at the same time.

Curiously, this nice old brick house is directly adjacent to another vanished quick cash operation: Title Doc at 2819 Broad River. It's interesting that both operations would see this as a good place to set up shop, and both of them be wrong (although, of course, conditions were a lot different before 2008).

UPDATE 13 March 2023 -- Well this place has been razed:

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

LoopNet says this rather nondescript little building on Two Notch near Covenant Road was built in 1970. I would have been in third grade, old enough in theory to recall what it was originally, but apparently my eyes totally slid over it for the first 41 years of its existence.

At some point though, it became the Tonya D Parks Nationwide. Judging by this comment from commenter Amanda they moved from here to the old Sandy's Escorts location at 5201 Two Notch in July of 2010.

Google doesn't give me much help on the E F Martin Co, telling me confusingly that it was either a "non bank holding company" or an auto repair shop.