Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, this is not a good week for restaurants. This is the third restaurant closing in a row I've done, and all of them very recent instead of 20 years ago...

I first wrote about this building almost exactly two years ago when D's Wings Northeast closed.

7 Grill was the next tenant there, and opened about six months ago. Their web site is still up, and I have to say the menu looks pretty good. Unfortunately I never got there partly because it is a good ways to drive and partly from just forgetting that it was there.

Sparkleberry Crossing seems to be having a bit of trouble really getting established and a number of operations have come and gone there. It's not a bad location -- there's fairly easy access from I-20, the connector with Two Notch isn't bad, and there's driveby traffic heading to Sandhill, but somehow businesses keep going under there.

(Hat tip to commenter O'Reilly)

UPDATE 11 December 2012: Interestingly it appears that the Beltline D's will be moving to this spot.

I wrote the first closing on this location when it was Mangia! Mangia!.

Shag Bistro opened not long after Mangia! closed, and while I never went there, I got the impression that it was an attempt to establish a place with more mass appeal than a somewhat upscale Italian restaurant. The name suggests something very casual and beachy, or at least the Shag part does. I've never been entirely certain what Bistro is supposed to connote in a restaurant name, but inasmuch as I have any impression, it goes in the opposite direction of casual and beachy.

Why didn't I ever get to Shag Bistro? Well, it's pretty much the same reasons I only got to Mangia! Mangia! once: location and presence-in-mind. That is to say, it's an awful long way to drive, and I usually would forget it even existed.

Of course, it's not a long way for people already in the area, but I suspect both Mangia! and Shag were just a little ahead of their time. I think everyone expects the metro area to hit Pontiac at some point, but while it might have already happened in the old economy, I suspect it will still be a while before the recession passes and the metro area starts building out again. The move of the Verizon call center from Richland Mall to Spears Creek will probably help area restaurants, but I guess it was too late for Shag.

(Hat tip to commenter Cheryl)

UPDATE 22 February 2022: Updating tags, adding map icon

I took some daytime pictures of this site, but the sun was against me from the side I was on, and they didn't come out well at all.

Anyway, this building comes up here from time to time, and I've been meaning to do a post on it. The only prior history I knew was Miami Subs Grill which was there at least until 1998. I don't know why i never stopped there. Partly I think because I was living out of town at the time Miami was in business, and I didn't want to take a chance on a place I didn't know versus hitting my known good spots and partly because the name just didn't grab me. When I think "Miami", sandwiches aren't really part of the image that comes to mind, and if I did have to guess at a Miami sandwich specialty, I would have guessed some sort of pressed Cuban sandwich -- subs didn't really enter into it, so it was sort of like seeing a place called New Jersey Grits.

Splendid China was the next tenant, and has been there for quite a while now. Driving by at lunchtime today, it appeared they were doing an excellent business.

Commenter Jimmy provides the D'Lites and Vision Center parts of the building's pre-Miami history, which I don't recall at all.

(Hat tip, obviously, to commenter Jimmy.)

UPDATE 9 July 2010: Added "Salisbury" to "Vision Center" in the post title based on the comments.

I finally got around to taking some pictures of The Village Tavern. This place was on Berryhill road, which is a frontage road on the north side of I-20, starting at Bush River Road and going east. I did not take it all the way to the other end, but it seems a fairly quiet road with very little traffic (though there is, of course a constant rumble from I-20 itself).

The area where the tavern building sits is quite pleasant. Visibility of I-20 is mostly screened by vegetation, and the tavern plot is very lush and grassy with Stoop Creek running behind the building, under a Berryhill Road bridge, I-20 and eventually into the Saluda River.

The tall neon sign at the edge of the property was the only part visible from I-20, and I would see it for years as I drove past either on errands in town, or on my way back to Aiken. Somehow I never got around to checking the place out while it was still open though.

Commenter Walt wrote this back in February:

I hope they found another place!

Read the rest of this entry »

Wildewood Centre Drive is a little I-20 frontage strip off of Clemson Road on the Northwest side of the interchange. It appears that everything down there is professional offices with the exception of this one retail building.

As you can see, the place is not quite finished, and there are no signs, but it was going to be a Dunkin' Donuts, and was
one of a number of local stores being built by Kainos Partners.

Apparently that operation was one of those classic cautionary tails about getting over-extended. One year, it was a top player in the Dukin' franchaise world, and the next year it was bankrupt.

The store on Main Street got a little further along than this one did, which I suppose was actually a little bit worse in the long run since the Dunkin' sign was actually presiding over the pre-funct operation in that case.

There are still a number of non-Kainos Dunkin' stores in town, so you can still get your cuppa and pastries. I can think of ones at Boozer Shopping Center and Big Lots on Two Notch, and I'm sure there are others.

UPDATE 16 May 2011 -- The new franchaisee has nearly completed work on the building, has put up the sign and appears almost ready to open:

UPDATE 2 July 2011 -- Well, it's finally open!

Of course by the time they finished it and opened, a totally new Krispy Kreme has been thought of, built, intalled and opened just up the block (and arguably in an easier to get to spot):

Changed post title date from "Never Opened" to "Finally Open"..

Let's Dish was a take & bake operation in Sparklebery Crossing at the intersection of Sparkleberry and Clemson Roads. It's a regional chain, but I believe this was the last location in South Carolina. Personally I don't really understand the appeal of the concept. I can certainly understand not wanting to actually cook at home, especially involved dishes, but it seems to me that take & bake still leaves you with dishes and silverware to clean up, plus you don't get out of the house. Of course I realize not everyone actively dislikes eating at home as I do, but it still seems a minimal benefit. Steak Out seems to have failed with a similar concept, but as far as I know, Piggly Wiggly's "Dream Dinners" take & bake is still going.

I think Sparklebery Crossing seems to have dodged the bullet of perceived failure -- so far. They have had Coldstone Creamery, D's Wings, Al Amir, and Za's Pizza all go under, which is a lot for such a new development, but to date they have managed to get reasonably top-tier replacements (though D's was vacant for quite a wihle).

(Hat tip to commenter Jason)

PowerOne Computer Warehouse was a rebuilt PC store that I believe opened on Saturday 29 August 2009. I say that with some confidence, because I had taken a bunch of pictures of the nearby The Aquarium & Pet Shop on that day, and stopped in at PowerOne on my walk back over to Fuddruckers where I was eating lunch.

I found them in the midst of something of a mini-crisis because they had not intended to open on 29 August, but there was a printing error in all the flyers that were distributed in the paper forcing them to open several days before they were ready. This meant that almost nothing in the store had a price on it, and in many cases not even of description of the PCs processor speed, amount of RAM, OS version etc. It looked like they had some pretty good stuff in the store, but as I didn't really need anything, I didn't persue the prices of any the systems.

I don't know if the unplanned opening somewhat "wrong-footed" them as the Brits might say, but for whatever reason, they didn't make it to New Years.

I recall seeing Dugan's Sports Bar from time to time as a drove Bush River Road, but I don't know anything about it other than that it preceded PowerOne into the 1807 storefront.

UPDATE 4 Jan 2010: Commenter Jeff notes that home theater company Sound Advice was once in the space.

UPDATE 22 August 2012 -- It appears that the place is preparing to open as one of the many new (and controversial) "Internet Sweepstakes" operations in the Columbia area:

UPDATE 24 October -- Well the sweepstakes thing never happened; I believe the law came down on all of them before this one got opened. Anyway, it's Sissy's Furniture now.

You wouldn't think bricks would need or indeed have much consumer advertising. After all, the only time you buy bricks is when you buy a house, and unless you are rich and doing a custom build, you probably end up with whatever the contractor uses rather than doing brick shopping.

Nonetheless, Richtex Bricks seemed to have a major advertising presence for most of my life, or at least it seemed major, since it was very eye-catching. And by that, I don't mean image ads like the one here from an old Sandlapper Magazine, I mean the billboards on I-20 near the brickworks. (Actually I didn't know where the works actually are until I looked it up today, but it was fairly clear from the fact that the billboards were always on I-20 just east of Broad River Road).

These billboards went through a number of campaigns, but the one I remember best, and which seemed to last the longest was one which made brick-related "visual puns". I'm sure if I weren't trying to think of them, I could remember more, but the only one that comes specifically to mind now was one that depicted a huge flying mammal constructed entirely of brick -- That's right, it was a brickbat. There were never any captions to these billboards, so you would try to figure them out as you drove by.

I see a little Richtex history here:

Richtex Brick in Columbia, South Carolina, recently initiated a special training program for inmates at Stevenson Correctional
Institution sentenced to the Shock Incarceration Program. Richtex, a company that has been in Columbia since 1919, employs 450 people in its three plants and is the largest brick company in South Carolina. Richtex operates an evening brick masonry school for adults which allows individuals to achieve apprenticeship or journeyman status depending on their individual career goal.

That document seems to be undated, but this 2003 link from Hanson explains what eventually happened to the company:

The integration of the seven companies was a huge undertaking that began in 1999, when Hanson Building Materials America, a subsidiary of London-based Hanson PLC, acquired seven major brick companies. Hanson Brick integrates Boren Brick (North Carolina), Richtex Brick (South Carolina), Sipple Brick (Kentucky), Michigan Brick (Michigan), U.S. Brick (Texas), Canada Brick (Ontario) and Briqueterie St. Laurent (Québec).

Hanson Brick brings together the skills and experience of more than 2,000 employees who serve customers in three languages - English, Spanish and French. The new company provides its customers with superior selection and service, offering five regional brick collections with more than 1,000 styles of brick.

I had thought a company called Boral Brick figured into the mix somewhere, since it seemed that I saw their billboards after I stopped seeing Richtex's, but as far as I can tell, they are unrelated and not subsumed into Hanson.

UPDATE 1 November 2009 -- Here is some more Richtex history from an archived version of their vanished web-site:

Richtex Brick began in 1919 as a small kiln operation on the banks of the Broad River, near Jenkinsville, SC. P.H. Haltiwanger, the original proprietor, early on felt an uncomfortable division between his commitment to Richtex Brick and his duty to Carolina Life, an insurance company he owned. Thus, he soon gave the presidency to his son, Deams Haltiwanger, who presided over the business during its casually prosperous early years, and who engineered its first significant advances in size and profitability.

In 1943, after more than two decades of steady business, an opportunity arose for immediate expansion. Deams Hatiwanger, on discovering that the Columbia Pipe Company had recently gone bankrupt, decided to acquire the business for Richtex Brick.

Richtex Brick has expanded and changed in important ways every decade since. A third plant was built in 1955, bringing the company's annual production capacity to 70 million brick. Plant number four was built in 1965 for the production of terra cotta pipe. Four years later, Richtex Brick was purchased by the Pomona corporation, which converted the fourth plant to brick manufacturing the following year, in 1970. In 1984 Richtex Brick was sold to Founders Court, and sold again in 1986 to Jannock Limited. Currently, Richtex Brick is owned by Hanson, PLC, a diversified building products corporation with operations in the U.K., Canada and in the United States. It ranks as one of America's largest producers of clay brick.

UPDATE 11 Nov 2010 -- Here's the I-20 visible site of the old Richtex (now Hanson) brickworks:

UPDATE 19 January 2022: Adding map icon, updating tags.

Here's another casualty of the recession, or at least that's my guess. Floor It Now has been, I think in this strip mall at the corner of Two Notch Road and O'Neil Court for at least several years. (It's hard to say for sure since I've never been in the market for flooring).

Unless people are actually falling through it, replacing a floor is pretty much an aesthetic deciscion, and right now, I'll bet that floor with all the scuff marks and old paint splatters doesn't really look that bad.

UPDATE 13 June 2009: It's now a Kim's Enterprises Beauty Supply