Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I believe the El Cheapo branding for this Millwood laundromat is fairly recent. Before that, it was Suds or something like that. I don't think the convenience store was an El Cheapo until recently either.

At any rate, apparently both were now under the same ownership and failed together early this month.

I wonder if they will sell off the commercial washers -- those can be quite hardy units.

This little convenience store on the corner of Academy Street & Colonial Drive near the hospital has recently moved across the street to 3208 Colonial Drive. It appears to me that there is a re-zoning notice on the old location (though the pictures are quite blurry for some reason).

I'm pretty sure that the new location was a hand-service carwash before Q Mart moved in.

The Glenns Bay Connector runs, under a couple of different street names, from oceanfront in Surfside Beach, across US-17 business, across US-17 bypass and to SC-707.

Between US-17 and 17 bypass, it is two lanes only. This has not been enough for years, especially since a large number of appartments have been built off of the road in this area. If you are trying to go from the bypass to US-17 in the afternoon, there will always be somebody stopped in the road trying to make a left turn into their complex, backing traffic up for blocks.

Currently there is a project underway to widen the road, and it has apparently eaten this Kangaroo Express on the north east side of the intersection. Don't cry for Kangaroo because there is *another* one on the south east side of the intersection.

It looks to me as though the carwash has been closed longer than the store itself.

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This little three suite building on Farrow Road just past SC-277 (headed away from town) was the home of the Short Stop Barber Shop & Hair Styling barber shop and salon on the right side of the building, and Dessie Short Stop III convenience store on the left side of the building and an ABC store in between.

You can still see where the barber pole was mounted on the wall, but the shop closed sometime before the February 2007 phonebook. There is a large gap in the books I have at home, but I can say that it *was* listed in the February 1997 book.

The convience store is not listed in any of my phonebooks, so apparently it went into operation after the Feb 1997 book and closed before the Feb 2007 one. (There is still another Dessie Short Stop at another location). This does not quite jibe with the Richland County business license list, which lists the place as holding business licenses as a convenience store in both 2008 and 2009 although it is consistent with the Columbia Star report of an application for a beer and wine permit in September 2006.

I don't have any information on the Red Dot ABC store in suite 2.

Someone can probably look at the gas price signs and make a better guess at exactly when Socastee Mini Mart went under, but I'm pretty sure it was open last summer and not last November 13th (when these pictures were taken -- Unfortunately, it was not a sunny day).

The place is on SC-544, probably 5 miles on the Socastee side of Coastal Carolina. SC-544 is the handy little cut-through from US-501 to US-17 and can save you a lot of grief if you end up inbound to Myrtle by the north route. It's less useful than it used to be though, as there are now more lights and a constant 45MPH speed limit. For many years, the road had a real rural character, and this station is a holdover from that era. Now however the area is getting more and more built up, and "regular" chains are starting to move in.

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When I would eat at Ruby Tuesday, I would occasionally stop at this S-Mart BP (which I'm pretty sure started as a Hess) on my way home, especially since they tore down the Forest Drive Circle K. It was nothing special, though I always thought it was a bit odd that they had the "under seige"/"cashier in a cage" setup inside as the area doesn't seem especially bad to me.

I'm pretty sure that the number of pumps decreased over the last year or so, something I wondered about. It may be that the writing has been on the wall for a while..

When the ax did fall, they wasted no time getting the remaining pumps out of there, a process that usually takes a little while.

The side road to this place, Crowson Road is an odd little street that connects Devine with Fort Jackson Boulevard and also has a semi "back way" into K-Mart with a bridge over Gills Creek. It has always had sort of an unfinished/1960s vibe to me. I guess this is probably due mostly to the odd cluster of buildings, from the original Egg Roll Station building to the old buildings at the intersection with Fort Jackson Boulevard..

(Hat tip to commenter Badger)

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Well, another day, another closed gas station on The Sumter Highway. This one is recent though, closing some time in March I think, though it can probably be figured accurately from the gas prices.. While I was taking these shots, the guy from the adjacent Subway came over and wanted to know if I was looking to buy the building. I'm not sure I ever did convey exactly what I was doing (which really doesn't make much sense to any rational person).

I like the canopy here, and the way it slightly "vees" rather than being completely flat as most new ones are. I think most modern construction has lost something. Notice too that the pumps have analog/mechanical displays. The one for 89 octane looks as though it was not happy to get up into the $3 range. Also note, one of the common features of a recently closed business: The new phonebook parked against the door.

As an added bonus, the drive home from here was very scenic:

(Hat tip to someone whose comment I can no longer find)

UPDATE 24 November 2014 -- The Hot Spot is open again (and apparently has been for some time):

UPDATE 22 January 2017 -- This place has now re-flagged as O M Mart:

UPDATE 31 January 2023: Adding map icon.

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I ran across this old country grocery the other day at the eastern intersection of Leesburg Road and Old Leesburg Road. I haven't been able to match the name and address in google to have any idea when it closed -- Just looking at it, it could be any time from 1970 to last week. (Although he "hours" sign on the door does look more modern than 1970). Anyway, it's the kind of place where you can imagine a barefoot kid walking in on a hot day for an RC Cola and a Moon Pie (and dropping peanuts into the soda..).

The middle route from Columbia to the Grand Strand takes you through Manning on SC-261. US-521 joins 261 there, and they run together until just east of Manning where 261 forks North to Kingstree and 521 continues on to Greeleyville.

Historically rest stops between Manning and Greeleyville have been pretty sparse, so perhaps that's why I especially noticed this rather lavish little gas plaza when it was constructed just a few years ago a little East of the 261/521 fork. That, and the fact that any sign with the word "pizza" on it tends to concentrate my attention.

While the right confluence of events hadn't ever happened, I figured it was a pretty sure thing that sooner or later I would be stopping at Tanners. Well, that was true, but not for the reasons I'd anticipated -- I noticed earlier this year that the place, which had started on such a large scale (this wasn't your typical no-name, one-guy, rural convenience store) so recently was well and truly gone.

I don't know if it turned out that US-521 wasn't as major a road as they had figured, but even with gas, pizza, bait and an attached liquor store as draws apparently the traffic wasn't there. LoopNet on the other hand, says they cleared $78,000 and 100,000 gallons monthly, so who knows?

At any rate, the road between Manning and Greeleyville is pretty empty again.

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