Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, this is interesting. I wrote about this building before under the mistaken impression that it was part of the old Quality Inn / Travelodge Suites property at 1539 Horseshoe Drive. As it turns out, I was wrong. This building was a totally seperate operation, and was just a typical office building.

Except that it turns out that one of the offices was used by the infamous 3 Hebrew Boys investment scam operation. In fact, according to this affidavit, two of the 3HB were actually arrested at this location.

Of course what got me to revisit this location and google the address was the fact that as I was driving by recently, I saw that it had almost totally burned down. Apparently this happened on 26 April, and here is what the appointed receiver for 3HB has to say about it:

On April 26, 2010 at approximately 1:00 pm, Richland County firefighters responded to a smoke alarm signal received from the office building located at 1529 Horseshoe Drive, Columbia, SC. The building is presently titled in the name of Daniel Development Group , LLC and was once used as the headquarters for Capital Consortium Group, LLC, a business among others that is referred to as the "Three Hebrew Boys". The building has been under the control of the Receiver since October 2007. The building and all contents therein were completely destroyed by the fire and has unofficially been determined to be a total loss. All computers and documents have been stored off-site since the Receiver took possession of the building in October 2007. The building was being managed by a reputable property management company, fully insured and continuously monitored by a security company. The Receiver will make a claim immediately with the Hartford Insurance Company for the full value of the building with the insurance proceeds going to the benefit of the victims.

Of course not everybody has gotten the news, and the building is still listed for sale on Loopnet.

There's an older picture there, and here are my pix from the other post I mentioned, which still have all the legal verbiage posted on the doors:

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"Your Host From Coast-to-Coast"

I went looking for this building on Knox Abbott last year, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing at that address now. The postcard certainly makes what appears to be a rather nondescript building look impressive by adding a sharp car and elegant model, even if there is perhaps a touch too much of "the old South" in the pose chosen.

My experience with Holiday Inns over the years has been mixed. I currently seek out the Holiday Inn Express sites, which seem to be uniformly good. The "regular" HIs can be a mixed bag. The one I used to go to quite often in DC invariably had the freeze/bake thermostat system, and at least once seemed to have gotten the cold and hot water pipes running to my room backwards (though luckily, hot was at best "tepid" in that case).

Here's another recent vacancy in Boozer Shopping Center. I don't know if it's just coincidence, but there were a number of storefronts that moved out at more or less the same time, including The Book Dispensary, Gift's of Love and this one, Ron Grahams Allergy Center.

I don't know much about the place, but the full name is Ron Graham Allergy & Air Quality Center Inc, they can help you filtering all the allergens from your home air, and they are now out in Lexington on Sunset Drive near the Target and McAlister's Deli.

This move leaves Boozer at least three storefronts to replace on the north side of the center.

I wrote about this place before, or at least it's main building when I did a closing for Piggly Wiggly Store 62. After The Pig closed, the building became a Gold's Gym which with this demolition moves to the old Sofa Express slot at Sandhill (apparently with plans for the old Ashley Furniture Homestore storefront as well).

As of Sunday 20 June 2010, the site is in sort of an odd state. From the front it almost appears untouched, but most of the back side has already been completely gutted or torn down, leaving the facade as sort of a potemkin shopping center.

According to commenter "mg", Dick Smith Nissan will be locating here eventually.

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In the tiki tiki tiki Tiki Tan
Where the pasty bronze tasty
And the wrinkles began..

Oops! Wrong attraction..

Interestingly, this storefront in the old Circuit City complex on Harbison, in between Honey Baked Ham and Gamestop, is the second Columbia tanning operation to close in the last month or so. Of course I don't know, but I speculate that summer in South Carolina is probably a slow season for paid tanning, since just stepping outside is generally a peak solar experience in itself.

(Hat tip to commenter Jason)

Curiously enough, just as I started to write this post, a palmetto bug (or as I like to call them, our state bird) landed on my sleve and freaked me way the heck out. To make matters worse, I was barefoot, and didn't have stomping gear immediately available. Nonetheless, I can report a confirmed kill, and it's still better than the time I woke up with one nestled in my palm..

This building sits just up the hill from Bayview Baptist Church and across the access alley to the defunct Few Acres trailer park from the old Mr. Muffler at Two Notch and Pinestraw.

The whole corner is potentially valuable property, but whatever is going to happen to it seems to be taking its time. There usually seems to be some sort of truck activity at Few Acres, but nothing seems to get demolished. The same goes for the Mr. Muffler building, and indeed this building seems to be undergoing a gutting rather than a knockdown.

The business names are clear enough for the exterminator and barber shop to say what they were -- the third business, Bonnies Treasures is a little less specific: Gifts & Tools?. At any rate, I think it has been many years since any of these operations were in business. Google, in fact, pulls up very little for "5308 Two Notch": just the barber shop and a late 2006 delinquient property notice from The Columbia Star.

Whatever the fate of the various businesses, the building itself seems very solidly built, and I hope it is, in fact, refurbished rather than torn the rest of the way down.

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This isn't a current events blog. I don't feel compelled to do a post on everything that closed this week. Even assuming I knew about all that, I'm just as happy to do a post on something that's been gone thirty years. On the other hand, I don't feel compelled to not do a post on something that happened yesterday, since it's kind of odd, interesting and nearby.

Commenter Jamie pointed out this story on the WLTX site:

Richland County, SC (WLTX) - Some Ramada Inn employees and customers are looking for answers after the hotel on Two Notch Road shut down suddenly.

Employees say they haven't gotten paid and customers have been showing up looking for refunds on their deposits.

"It's sad. Why would they do this? Or how could this happen," said employee Stacey Knight. Knight and her coworkers are without a job and without a paycheck. They say the owners of the Ramada Inn closed for business, padlocking the doors shut.

It's not too uncommon for employees at a restaurant to show up for work and find the place closed, but hotels are not a day-to-day business. People make long term plans involving hotels, and normally, at least for a chain hotel, I would expect some sort of orderly wind-down, with people being rebooked to alternate properties or having up-front money refunded. Apparently not so here:

There was one lady in particular that made a deposit for a family reunion, $1100, and she wanted her money back," said another employee.

I'll wager that's one family that never uses any Ramada again..

Anyway, my first memory of this property is when it was a Holiday Inn. I never stayed there (why would I need a hotel in my hometown?), but I think I did go inside once. If I recall correctly, I went with a group of friends after a wedding, probably in the late 70s or early 80s. At that time, the lounge (now McKenna's) attached to the hotel was called Pawleys (a name calculated to attract my attention), and they catered to the backgammon boomlet (which petered out not long afterwards) by having backgammon sets available in the bar area.

I believe Holiday Inn dropped the property after I-77 came through to move closer to that Interstate. For a while the place was (I think) independant, with a big sack covering up the old Holiday Inn sign.

(Hat tip to commenter Jamie.)

UPDATE 26 July 2010 -- Here are some more pictures:

UPDATE 28 August -- After commenter Matt pointed out goings on at this closed Ramada, I decided to take a look and I'm still a bit puzzled at what is happening. It looks like the whole place is being gutted, but they don't seem to be knocking it down in toto. Perhaps it will be like the old Columbia Athletic Club and Splendid China where they have replaced everything except the actual outer walls..

UPDATE 12 September 2012 -- The whole building has now been fenced off. Driving by, I could still hear the chirps of hundreds of smoke dectectors needing new batteries..

15 June 2013:

Full demolition has started. For a long time it appeared they had only done enough demolotion to "poison-pill" the structure, ie: make sure nobody could buy it and reopen it as a motel. In these pictures, the full knockdown is well underway. Also, note the for-sale sign just off of Trenholm Extension.

14 July 2013:

Not nearly as much "progress" as you might expect, but the demolition goes on.

10 August 2013:

I had never seen a freight train stuck on this stretch of the track by Two Notch, but in this case a long train was stopped for upwards of 45 minutes, blocking off both Dawson Road & Oakway Drive. I had to go all the way down to the Two Notch / Trenholm Extension intersection to get back to the old Ramada. As I finished taking this set, train finally started to move and the railway maintainence pickup truck (fitted with track wheels) came along the tracks behind the train. What a track crew could have been fixing behind a stopped train, I'm not sure.

As you can see, the Ramada is now entirely gone except for a pump building and some incidentals like TVs and silverware.

UPDATE 17 August 2013: Added verbiage and pictures for 15 June 2013, 14 July 2013 and 10 August 2013. Also added complete photosets for those days.

UPDATE 5 December 2014 -- This is interesting. Apparently I missed it, but the property went to forced auction in August 2014. That means that whoever originally owned it tore down a perfectly good hotel property with no idea, or no workable idea, how to make money off the property any other way:

Photosets:

Photoset 26 August 2012
Photoset 15 June 2013
Photoset 14 July 2013
Photoset 10 August 2013

This little strip on the outside edge of Richland Mall has seen a number of things come and go over the decades, and through several makeovers. I believe that at one time a hardware store was there, and it was the original (or at least a former) site of Ambassador Animal Hospital. The last time I posted about it was when Wild Birds Unlimited moved out of the corner spot.

I don't tan at all -- that is to say I don't attempt to, and I don't think I'm capable of it. I'm pretty sure my dermatologist would like me to dig a tunnel to the mailbox and otherwise stay inside until sundown. That's not to say I don't think tans look attractive. I wonder though if all the froo-fraw the last decade or so about skin cancer hasn't hurt the tan industry.

At any rate, you can't get a tan at Tan For All Seasons anymore, though I daresay this being South Carolina, and June, that you could get a pretty good start just standing outside their door for a bit..

(Hat tip to commenter ChiefDanGeorge.)

I wish Zorba's Express in Irmo were closer to home so I could get out there for pizza more often, but last time I did, I noticed that this nearby storefront in the same Publix plaza was now vacant.

Judging from the google hits, Kwik Kopy seemed to offer the same range of services as The UPS Store or FedEx Office. I wonder if the copying business is taking hits from home printers and electronic documents. I vividly remember the first time I used a copy center (it was kind of a new concept then) to make a copy of The Lions' Book. It took hours and cost me a considerable chunk of my nearly non-existent college-student cash. Today, someone would just download the PDF..

UPDATE 7 June 2010: Changed post closing date from 2010 to 2009 based on comments.

UPDATE 15 March 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

This motel is a landmark which has existed for all of my life, but which I never (in memory) saw until 2006. This motel is on the east side of US-17, just south of Gullie's Shell station, and north of the Georgetown credit union. To say that by 2006 I had driven this stretch of road more than a few times understates it a bit, but I never had the least clue that there were buildings just off the road -- the whole place was so overgrown as to be completely invisible. Apparently the lot was partially cleared late in 2005, and when I was down that winter, I had quite a What the heck did I just drive by? moment as I passed by the first time after that.

Graphitti in a concrete slab at the old office building dates this place to early 1956, and the fixtures all have that mid 50s look as well. In fact, the bathroom tile looks a good bit like what I have at home which is almost exactly the same vintage. I have no idea what happened to the place. It certainly wasn't (and isn't) uncommon for Grand Strand businesses to fail, and the south strand was very isolated and non-commercialized for quite a while. For years the abandoned cabins of another motel sat at the South Causeway of Pawleys Island, more or less where the Food Lion now is. In fact for years, the only motel south of Murrells Inlet was the Quality Inn Seagull -- most people then and now rented houses to vacation in the area.

The whole area is being further cleared now, all the way back to the marsh. I suspect work would have started sooner after the initial clearing of the motel except for the economy. At any rate, I suspect the whole thing will be houses before too long, and I fully expect the motel to be knocked down before the year is out. (I've already got my shower handle, to go with my other one from Douglas.)

If anyone knows what the motel was called, when it closed, or why it closed, sound off!

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