Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I've featured this building on Bush River Road across from the new(ish) Wal-Mart, before, but erroneously in a post I still have to sit down and clean up and correct eventually. Hopefully this post will be more correct.

This building was a Food Lion grocery until the 1990s. I'm not sure when it closed, but it is not listed in the February 1997 phonebook, so I'm guessing the mid-1990s. According to commenter Saturday's Child, it was built as a Thrifty Mart around 1969 and then became a Food Town, staying with that chain when they switched their name to Food Lion.

After Food Lion left, it was a UPS call center and an operation called Spherion, possibly not in that order.

For the last several years it has been vacant, but as commenter William points out, the building is now being rehabilitated to become an AutoZone.

(Hat tip to commenter William)

I don't have an address for this old country store, but it is on Bluff Road, I believe somewhere near the National Park. The (Coke provided) sign has obviously been painted over a couple of times. This sort of faux roof-line seems to have been common for stores at one time.

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Here's another Pig closing from last year. This one is on the East side of US-1 not too far from the Barnyard flea market. Interestingly, the address is Lexington, though I did not think Lexington started that far South.

Though several recently closed Pigs have become Bi-Los, there is no sign of another tenant for this one yet.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 1 March 2016 -- As mentioned in the comments, this is now KJ's IGA:

UPDATE 21 September 2022: Adding map icon. Updating tags.

Another day, another Piggly Wiggly.

This store, at the corner of Clemson and Hardscrabble Roads, looks like it was a pretty nice one, though I can;t ever recall going inside. I might have thought that it would have benefitted from the closing of the Food Lion across the street, but in this case the ongoing woes of the chain seem to have outweighed any additional traffic from displaced Food Lion shoppers.

The closing of this store started rather oddly, with an "inventory reduction" sale. Since there is no reason for a grocery store to ever have such a sale in the normal course of events, this seems to have been some sort of signal that the store was closing before the management was able to say that officially.

This closing will be a big hit for Magnolia Pointe, as The Pig was the only anchor in the main strip of the shopping center. There is a CVS in an outparcel region, but that won't bring shoppers in to the shopping center proper.

(Hat tip to commenter ken holler)

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As nearly as I can tell, this Bi-Lo closed in 2006, leaving Capitol Square without an anchor store.

The space is now Habitat For Humanity's ReStore. I believe the closest Bi-Lo to this spot is now the one on US-1 near the Wal-Mart.

Well, just to continue our ongoing list of Pig closings, the store in Litchfield Beach is now gone.

This was a fairly new store, and quite nice. It also seemed to always do quite a good business as far as I could tell.

The store is located in a plaza just across US-17 from the main Litchfield resort area (with the old Tara Theater) and has a number of restaurants and a few retail operations. There has been some churn during the financial crisis, and Blockbuster, a computer store and a couple of others have gone, but Massey's Pizza and Eggs Up have moved in, so on the whole it is doing OK. Physically the site is quite nice, with moss draped live-oaks and stop-light access.

The Pig will be re-opening as a Bi-Lo, and I have to think that this will mean moving the Bi-Lo from a few blocks north into this spot. Currently the Bi-Lo (originally built as a Harris Teeter) is in an older, failing plaza, which has recently seen the only other decent store (Litchfield Books) decamp to the new Fresh Market complex.

All of this movement takes place in the total revamping of the local grocery environment. Along with the newly opened and afore-mentioned Fresh Market, the Grand Strand's first Publix will be opening in the currently dowdy Pawleys Island Plaza, and a Lowe's Foods will be opening in a new plaza at the Island's South Causeway. This has to be putting a good deal of pressure on Food Lion which has been running a rather up-scale location also at the South Causeway.

(*) All the online google hits list this location as Pawleys Island. In my mind that is clearly wrong. This is Litchfield Beach, plain and simple. Somehow the area covered by the Pawleys Island moniker has tended to spread as "Arrogantly Shabby" has become "upscale" and gained a bit of cachet.

Well, we've pre-discussed this closing here, but the actual event finally took place on Saturday 9 November 2013 when this store closed as a Pig at 3PM.

As it happened, I was there a bit after 2PM, and found the store surprisingly well stocked. The entire right quadrant of the store, with produce, the bakery, the cafe and Dream Diners was empty, but the non-perishable isles were still pretty well stocked. I suppose the idea is that it probably cost the Pig less, or perhaps even made a little money, to transfer then to Bi-Lo rather than go through a drawn out sale, or trying to get them back to the warehouse.

As commenter Matt mentions, the store brand stuff did go on sale at deep discounts, because, well, Bi-Lo can always sell Dixie Crystals, but can hardly carry Pig Swig or other Pig branded items.

The store is to reopen next Friday, 15 November 2013 as Bi-Lo.

With this closure, the Garners Ferry closing and the Litchfield Beach closing, all the "nice" Pigs that I have personal experience with are gone. The one on Devine appears to be one of the older, smaller layouts, and is a bit of a drive anyhow.

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Interesting tidbit in The Sun News.

Here's the thing, this store, the one at Pawleys Island / Litchfield Beach and the recently closed store on Garners Ferry Road are all relatively new and upscale stores. This one in Forest Park is especially nice, and the one at the beach is in the same class (though a bit smaller, I believe). When you're abandoning your best stores, that can't be a good sign.

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