Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The Gap location in Columbiana Centre closed this week, leaving the brand with no locations in the Midlands.

Here is The State on the story, and The Post & Courier weighs in here. In particular, the P&C story mentions the mall shooting, about which I had already forgotten, which took place in the corridor outside the store -- I don't know if that were a factor in the closing as the chain has plenty of problems overall, but it can't have helped.

(Hat tip to commenter Lone Wolf)

This location of The Southern Belly opened in the 2015 timeframe, and apparently ran concurrently with their Rosewood location for a while. There was no media notice of this closing, and google still thinks they are open.

Their Facebook page, however, suggests that they were "Gone With The Wind" as of 11 December 2022.

(Hat tip to commenter Heath)

The Broad River Road location of Philly Pretzel Factory closed in October of 2020, but this location, in the Publix plaza on Rosewood, soldiered on for another two years. As far as I can tell from their final Facebook posting, 30 December was the last day here.

I believe I only went by this store once -- I was expecting a buttery pretzel like Auntie Anne's, and found these a bit dry. Also, the parking was a little sparse on that side of the building.

Here is a very brief State story on the closing.

(Hat tip to commenter MB)

The company has been in trouble for a while, and according to The State announced last September that they would be closing 150 of its 700 stores. This Sparkleberry Square location is one of those, but apparently the Harbison and Garners Ferry locations will stay open, at least for now.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

This closing is rather interesting as there doesn't seem to have been any media coverage of it, and Google still thinks the place is open. Looking at Wikipedia and googling for news in general does not suggest the chain is in trouble, so I'm not sure what was going on here.

(Hat tip to commenter Mia)

This is a shame as this Baskin-Robbins was my go-to for milkshakes & ice cream. Not that I went that often, but it was pleasant on a summer night to get something cold and hang around in the warm evening outside for a while.

I believe this closing leaves Forest Acres without an ice-cream parlor for the first time in my life. There is still Zesto for a chocolate-dip, but as much as I like soft-serve now and then, it's not really the same thing.

I'm not sure what's up with the construction, but apparently someone jumped the gun a bit.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

When Smashburger first opened here, I liked it quite a bit. The burger was really good, and there were lots of bun options, including a chipolte bun that was quite tasty. The booths were much more comfortable than 5 Guys steel chairs, and the ice-tea, which was also quite good, was attractively dispensed from clear plastic tubes which mimicked old-style hand-pump gas dispensers. The only fly in the ointment, and one that kept me from being a regular is that I didn't like the fries. They were well executed for what they were trying to do, but I didn't care for the idea they were executing.

So, I would go every now and then, but probably not more than three or so times a year. All that was before the pandemic. When I went back after the pandemic, everything had changed. All of the bun options were gone, and there were no ice-tea dispensers at all in the dining room. In fact when I asked about tea, the staffer looked at me like I was crazy, and apparently went off to brew one cup. There didn't seem to be much traffic there, and a couple of times when I came to eat at the adjacent Moe's, I thought the place had already closed.

In fact, that didn't happen until late december of 2022 as reported in The Post & Courier. The reason given there was that the rent was due to triple, but I think the business they were doing had to be a factor as well, or I would have expected Moe's to jump ship as well.

Commenter Larry reports that this spot is to become a Dave's Hot Chicken.

(Hat tip to commenter Trevin Montgomery)

UPDATE 27 June 2023 -- Now Dave's Hot Chicken:

(The two pictures directly above come from commenter Jimmy -- Thanks! I have the feeling someone else sent me some others as well, but I can't get to that hard drive right now unfortunately)

Beacon Hill Block was the strip mall on the corner of Airport Boulevard & Boston Avenue which housed, among other businesses, the former Lizard's Thicket and Subway.

I have not been by lately, but commenter Brandon Brown says the signage indicates a Murphy's Express will be going in here.

Here is a not particularly informative notice from West Metro News.

(Hat tips to several folks, including commenters Gypsie, Matt & Brandon Brown)

UPDATE 26 January 2023 -- Work continues:

UPDATE 17 April 2023 -- The new Murphy Express on this spot is now open:

Christmas Eve afternoon, I made a "Merry Christmas, Columbia" post, and signed off to enjoy the holiday.

The next time I tried to access the site, late Christmas Day, it was down. Since I had notice from GoDaddy that they would be doing a disruptive upgrade soon, I figured they must have thought that Christmas Eve was somehow a good time to do it. (It's not -- nobody wants to deal with stuff on Christmas Eve!).

Anyway, I didn't have time over the holidays to deal with what I figured would be re-uploading files, configuring web servers and restoring databases, and then after New Years I got sick as a dog and just didn't have the energy to approach it.

Yesterday evening I finally felt good enough to deal with it, went into the control panel and thought: Wait A Minute! There were no reports on any server activity at all -- So I clicked on the virtual POWER button, and now all is back.

I certainly didn't turn it off, and there's no point pursuing it as I'm sure nobody at GoDaddy will admit to turning it off, but off it was turned.

The good news is: Hey that was really easy to fix!

The bad news is apparently the upgrade still is coming at some point in the reasonably near future.

But anyway: Happy New Year, Columbia!