Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Actually I'm not at all confident on a closing date for this little ABC store on Fairfield Road just north of I-20 as it does not appear in any phonebooks I have. However the place, while showing some wear, especially along the roofline, and sitting in a somewhat overgrown lot, is still in pretty good shape, so I'll go with late 2000s.

I like the name!

This garden center behind the old Parklane Seafood/Flamingo Club building started off in the South Carolina Farmers' Market on Bluff Road, and moved over to Leesburg when the Farmers' Market was redeveloped.

(Hat tip to commenter Badger)

This small urban wear shop was in a little strip mall on Broad River Road more or less across from Widewater Square. I can't find it in my phonebooks, so I'll just put the closing date at "late 2000s".

Here's The State story on the closing of Corner Kick, just down from the former Marinoni's in Murraywood Centre.

When I got by last Sunday, the place was still apparently still open (though closed for the day), but already referring customers to Todd & Moore with their door signs. My guess is that the poster is probably David Beckham or someone similar -- I wouldn't want to come up on that one unexpectedly.

(click-through rated PG-13..)

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I'm not exactly sure when this furniture store at the corner of Broad River Road & Means Avenue closed, but I can tell you that it opened on 16 March 2012.

Unless you're buying a house, new furniture is pretty much a post-ponable expense, and houses aren't exactly selling like hotcakes now either -- I think the furniture business has got to be hurting.

This building just north of I-20 at the corner of Fairfield & Sharpe Roads has apparently been quite a number of things according to google, though mostly iterations of bar/restaurant and grocery. Brown's was the last tenant, or at least anyone after them never repainted, but I cannot find any active listing in my 1997 or 2007-2012 phonebooks, so I'm just leaving the closing date as "2000s".

The lot is a little bit overgrown, but the building still seems to be in pretty good shape. It wouldn't surprise me for somebody else to give it a go here.

Commenter Terry's remarks on the Hostess bankruptcy, and his list of other vanished American icons brought to mind once more Borders Books. I have posted before about the closed stores I found in Gainesville and Tampa.

Those stores have now been re-purposed. This store which I found in Orlando on Sandlake Road opposite a huge mall, as of August had not been. In fact, all the fixtures and some of the office equipment are still in place just as if the book supply truck could pull up any minute.

The distinctive look of a Borders puts me in a nostalgic mood, as though I might once more spend my Kansas City evenings there, drinking coffee and poring over racks of books I could never find in Columbia, Fayetteville or Aiken, or leafing through low circulation magazines I had known of only by repute until seeing them there.

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Driving back from Moe's in Lexington recently, I noticed that Exotica International in the strip mall at the corner of Sunset & Mallard Lakes Drive, is having a retirement sale. Well, retiring someplace sunny sounds like a good plan this time of year. I'm not sure when the final closing will be, but I would expect them to plan for Black Friday and the shopping season, so am going to guess December though of course they may sell out earlier.

UPDATE 13 March 2013: Articles in The State mention that the owners, Governor Haley's parents, have retired. The store remains open presumably under new ownership.

UPDATE -- But they could be wrong:

I was unable to find this little thrift store (a few spaces to the left of the package store) listed in any of my at-home phonebooks, but I'm guessing it closed 2009-ish.