Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

To me, AAMCO always brings to mind a distinctive radio ad from the 60s or 70s. It went like:

Double-AY (beep! beep!) EM-CEE-OH!
AAMCO

That said, I've never been to a place that specialized in transmissions, though I might have if my '96 hadn't ended up getting totaled again. Anyway, this building is in Lexington at the point where US-378 splits away from North Lake Drive, and is now Tint World, which does "Automotive Styling and Window Tinting".

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

I see that the Woodmen Of The World lodge by the US-1 fleamarket has finally given up on Bingo for good.

For months, their sign "thanked" COVID-19 for the temporary suspension of the games, but sometime around the New Year, they decided they are not going to bring them back.

O-19.

This building was home to Keller Williams Realty (KW Columbia, SC), who have now moved to 1 Harbison Way.

This LoopNet listing shows the building before demolition and indicates it was built in 2000, so it was not that old. This LoopNet PDF flyer indicates that before the demolition, both this building and the adjacent T-Mobile office at 128 Harbison were for sale. I guess there were no takers for this one.

What is interesting is that they are really basically just one building. There may technically be an additional wall between them, but they are going to have to work carefully to leave the T-Mobile building alone while knocking this one down. I should go back and see how it turned out.

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I'm afraid this is yet another place I never got around to eating at, despite the fact, according to they closing sign, they were here ten years. They were pretty quick to get the butcher paper up too -- I really was unable to see inside the place at all.

Here is a ColaDaily article on the closing.

(Hat tip to commenter Ellen)

I noticed on a recent drive-through of Boozer Shopping Center that First Credit on the north side of the plaza is vacant. I can't really find any information on it, but I'm guessing that I went by that storefront a number of times in 2021 without noticing a vacancy, so I will tentatively place it in that year.

Driving Old Bush River Road between Saint Andrews Road and North Lake Drive, I noticed that the train tracks which used to cross the road between Kiawah & Bilton are now gone. My surmise is that this has something to do with the changeover in Lake Murray operations from SCE&G to Dominion since the old tracks seem to go to a big facility, but that's a total guess.

UPDATE 14 June 2022 -- As mentioned by commenter Homer, here is the other end of this rail spur, also now taken up, which used to cross Saint Andrews Road near C&J Automotive:

Also adding "Railroad Crossing" to the post title as that seems more descriptive than "Train Tracks". Adding "Saint Andrews Road" as well.

The last closing I did for this location was in 2012 when it ceast to be Discount Furniture. I'm not sure when Green Dot moved in, but they apprently moved out in late 2021 as reported by commenter Gypsie. It looks like they are a small Carolinas chain, and still have offices in the Charleston area and Wilmington.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

13 July 2008:

8 February 2022:

9 February 2022:

The last movie I saw during the pre-COVID era at Regal Columbia Cinema was Frozen 2, in which I was highly disappointed (though my niece liked it). I know that I saw at least one movie there after the theaters re-opened, but for the life of me I can recall what it was right now. On both occasions the experience was fine (apart from the actual movie..), but you could tell that the place was definitely an older auditorium which hadn't kept up with all the new trends.

That was not at all the case when these cinemas opened. As I have written before this location was not the first theater at Richland Mall. The old open-air mall had a free-standing duplex on an out-parcel where I saw many a "summer movie" during those old "drop off the kids & shop" promotions. It also famously had a time capsule, though commenter Del says it eventually came to naught.

When the old mall was razed and the current mall was built, the new rooftop cinema opened as part of the Litchfield Theaters chain, and it was classy. There were real cloth curtains over the screens which would be closed between the trailers and the main feature, which would start after the famous "Sea Oats" logo. I'm a little hazy on what happened to Litchfield Theaters. I think perhaps the head guy perished in a plane crash and the chain fell into hard times without him, but I couldn't swear to that.

Anyway, after that, it became part of the Regal chain, and I always looked forward to the "policy trailer" with the animated monorail riding along a track of 35mm film (and the Kernel of Doom! popcorn). The trailer was updated many times over the years with increasingly elaborate train redesigns, state of the art CGI and audio effects. Most recently, it has lost a bit of its charm as people have forgotten what "film" was, and the 35mm tracks have been replaced with actual rails.

As you can see from the 2008 pictures, in the beginning, you could take the escalator from inside the mall to the roof and walk to the theater from there, and there were also "Now Playing" & "Coming Soon" posters in displays on the walls of the mall in a couple of places. Sometime after Belk closed its entrance to that side of the mall, they stopped running the escalator, and the only way to the theaters was to drive to the rooftop.

As I mentioned elsewhere recently, my impression in years past was that this theater and the theaters behind Golden Corral had a gentleman's agreement to not book duplicate movies in most cases, and it was usually the case that if you were in Forest Acres, your movie would be at this theater or that one, but not both. In recent years this broke down, especially with so few movies available recently, and I don't think that helped the bottom line for this place. Certainly being closed for months on end during the darkest days of the pandemic did not.

During that closure, the mall management put up traffic cones and sawhorses to keep you from driving back into the theater area, and as you can see in the 9 February pictures, those are now back. However the cones were set aside today as a number of vehicles were back in the theater area, perhaps getting ready to clear it out, as was a news crew from WOLO.

With the mall currently under contract to be sold and possibly razed, I doubt that any second operation or dollar cinema will move in here, but as predictions about the mall have always been iffy, we'll just have to see.

Here are stories from WLTX, The State & The Free Times.

(Hat tip to commenter Jeannette)

I stopped at Drip a few years ago when I had an appointment down town and I had a bit of time before I had to be on the grid again. I thought it was a decent cup of coffee, not something I would fight parking to have again, but not bad at all.

They closed the main street location on a temporary basis in October, and have recently decided with the ongoing labor and supply-chain problems, they are just going to make it permanent and concentrate on their Five Points location.

The State has the story here.

(Hat tip to commenter Dustin)

I noticed as I was going to Uno recently that this Sunset Boulevard Nationwide office downhill from I-20 on the way into Lexington had moved. It looks like they are now at 5464 Sunset.

Next into the building will be a Kenneth Shuler branch.