Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here's another vacancy at The Shops At Columbiana Crossing. This one seems to have happened in 2009, and as far as I can tell, Sosi did not move elsewhere.

I find it a little curious that this strip does not seem to update either the storefront marquees or their road-side sign...

Surprisingly, given its location at the corner of Two Notch & Faust Street, this building was apparently once connected with a church or some sort of religious personage. I can dimly remember seeing the Merita store there, and Titlemax seems to have been the most recent tenant, showing up in the February 2007 phonebook, but not thereafter. According to Richland County the place is currently owned by Midland Holding Corp who are apparently trying to sell it.

The lot is also home to a 30 Sheet Poster billboard, and if you click that link, you can see the place with the Merita store in operation, and a different paint job.

(Ad from February 2008 Bellsouth directory)

This section of Devine Street, between Beltline and Fort Jackson Boulevard, has always had a different feel from the rest of the street. This little strip is the one-time home of Le Petit Chateau and Martin's Coffee House. Note that Brassworks took more than one street address as the door pictured is clearly labeled as 4439 Devine Street.

The Brassworks building, with its striking second story of windowed space suspended on columns over the sidewalk and coming much closer to the street than the rest of the surrounding single story buildings has always caught my eye. I'm not entirely sure what one brings to a brass-smith, but I'm sure I don't have it, and so unfortunately never took the opportunity to stop by.

This former car lot and storage building outlet is on Garners Ferry Road in Hopkins adjacent to the old Sister Rose/Wateree Arms building. I'm not sure when the car lot closed, but Best Built Barns is in the February 2010 -- February 2011 phonebook, but not the next one, so I'm saying it probably closed in 2010. Certainly it was looking a bit overgrown in mid July 2011 when I took these pictures.

Commenter Alaska Jill sends in these pictures of Gibbes, saying:

Gibbes Machinery: The sunlit pictures were taken, I believe, in 1998. I used to park at the Gibbes lot as a USC student and knew those buildings were probably not going to be around much longer. Demolition started not long after those photos were taken. One morning in early 1999, we had snow in Columbia. I was a graduate assistant at the journalism school at the time, and had brought my camera with me to get some pictures of Columbia in the snow. From the steps of the Coliseum, I caught a couple pictures of the demolition in progress. An additional picture is taken from the former Gibbes lot.

The old Gibbes space is directly across Blossom Street from the Coliseum -- I'll have to consult some old directories to get the actual address. Right now it's the location of USC's new-ish "wellness center", which frankly sounds like a boondoggle with no educational function to me, but back in the day, Gibbes was there as a representative of the old "manufacturing" look of the Vista area. I never had a clear idea of what the machinery side of the business did, but the car lot was the only Volkswagen dealer in the Columbia area.

After USC got this property, the dealership moved to Broad River Road, just west of the river and either went under or sold out to the current tenant, Wray Mazda Volkswagen.

Take a good look at the second picture above. In the background, you can see The Towers and also the mini-mall building (muraled "Gamecock Clothing") which once held Robo's video arcade, Pappy's and a number of other small, student-oriented businesses. It has since been torn down to put in the Adesso condos.

UPDATE 17 December 2011: The building I tag as the "mini-mall" was actually Addams University Bookstore a separate building in the same general area. See the comments.

(Hat tip to Alaska Jill)

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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Well, it's back to the Shops At Columbiana Crossing today. From their web site Fleet Feet Sports appears to be an athletic shoe and running wear store, which pretty much rules it out as a place I would ever visit, but they had quite a nice little space in this Columbiana Drive storefront. I particularly like the curvy wood (or faux wood) flooring and the somewhat canted counter.

In late September they relocated, fleetly, but probably not on foot, to a much larger space at 945 Lake Murray Boulevard next to Bruegger's.

This old-school Exxon on Two Notch near the I-20 interchange, and O'Neil Court is currentl Go Used Tires, but apparently that will only last until the sale of the building, which is currently on offer.

This is a classic look for an Esso/Exxon of that era. Here is a similiar one (which I believe stayed open longer) in Yulee Florida:

Hopefully the Two Notch building will not be razed, but given the age, I wouldn't bet on it.

UPDATE 5 December 2011: Added Esso to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 10 October 2016 -- The Two Notch building continues to deteriorate. I don't see how the next operation won't raze it. I also note the sheltered area looks to have been something of a homeless campout:

Compared to your usual auto parts store, this warehouse space on Laurel Street is huge (the property listing says 20,000 square feet). It's also kind of out of the way. I don't know if the business model was that this is where garages got their parts (vs retail customers) or if they had their own machine shop in the warehouse space. Or perhaps Bumper to Bumper and All Pro split the space. At any rate, it's all available now.

Given my disinclination to do anything before noon, buildings on the west side of the road are always a problem in pictures on this site, and these taken-against-the-sun shots of the location of the old Cycle Center and newer Rent-N-Roll are no exception.

There is a remedy in this case, so far at least: the LoopNet listing for this building has better lit pictures of both the cycle and auto incarnations of the spot and the still extant Rent-N-Roll site has a 100 picture slideshow of automotive candy sitting in front of the building.

The new tenant seems to be in now, and the place is a tobacco, beer and package store called Kings.

(Hat tip to commenter Jonathan)