Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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)

I have done a couple of other posts on this mostly dead strip mall on Two Notch at Polo called Park Centre. In particular, here is Piggly Wiggly / Harris Teeter (and Bruno's), and here is Pic 'N Pay.

Neither of those was the strip's main tenant however. That was initially Walmart and then after that, NetBank.

Of course everyone is familiar with Walmart and their gradual move to bigger "Supercenter" locations. That, I believe is what happened to this location: It was replaced by the Supercenter at 10060 Two Notch Road.

I was not as familiar with NetBank which moved in after Walmart moved, probably in the late 1990s or early 2000s.

To summarize the NetBank Wikipedia page, NetBank was an Atlanta/Alpharetta based operation which started as Atlanta Internet Bank and Net.B@nk before settling on the NetBank name. It was a very early venture into Internet banking and mainly made its money from mortgages.

It did quite well for a while, but eventually overextended itself and got into trouble as its core mortgage business started to fail (though this was a little before the main 2008 mortgage crisis). After flailing for a while, it decided to sell itself off to another bank, but found it didn't even have enough to bring to the table to pull that off and ended up being taken over by the Office of Thrift Supervision on 27 September 2007, becoming the biggest thrift failure since the S&L crisis of the 80s.

This site was a big enough part of its assets that it was mentioned in the Bloomberg article on its failure as part of the asset base to be sold off. After the takeover, the FDIC insured accounts were acquired by ING Direct.

According to commenter Soxinsc, Blue Cross/Blue Shield leased the NetBank space for a while, and there does still seem to be some sort of front desk with signs of use in there though I find it odd that the NetBank logo was never taken down if someone else did have the building..

I noticed recently that this place, next to the old Galaxy World arcade was vacant, but had no memory of what it was.

The sign was inside propped up against the window, but I didn't want anyone thinking I was fooling around with their car, so I didn't get out. Google says it was a party rental store, Thompson's Grand Rental Station.

I'm sure that wasn't the first tenant though. The building is another one of those buildings "of a certain age" in Columbia with rock facades, and the odd little bay-window nook on the back side looks as thought it may have been a drive-up window at some point.

According to my fuzzy memory, this little stretch of road, now elevated above Two Notch proper was once Two Notch itself before I-77 was cut through. I also think there was a little locksmith kiosk up there for a long time, even after Two Notch moved.

UPDATE 12 September 2012 -- It's now a Harley store:

Well, I have to say that the web site for this place is certainly an interesting attempt at persuading someone to make a major purchase! I'll bet anyone surfing for a car from work had a moment of boss fear..

I'll also note that in Computer Science, something is "virtual" if it appears to be there but actually is not, which I guess is a good metaphor for the current state of this car lot on the East side of Broad River Road not too far from Videos & Beyond.

LifeWay is a commercial outreach of the Southern Baptist Convention and their stores sell Bibles and church supplies. This one moved from the Barnes & Noble plaza on Harbison to Bower Parkway sometime in the 2000s. I know it's been more than a year ago as the first picture is from October 2010.

The little corner area where LifeWay was is kind of interesting as it has sort of an entrance corridor set off by a rather snazzy, filigreed girder. On the downside, being in the corner means that people have to park farther away from your store than most other stores in the strip.

After being vacant for a good while, the suite is finally re-opening as Anna's Linens

UPDATE 11 November 2011: Updated the moving date in the post title from "2000s" to "May 2010" based on commenter Andrew's research.

I was meaning to get back to this building when the sun was not against me, but as yet have not. Anyway, I noticed it driving back from downtown towards Harden one day a few months ago and the name sounded vaguely familiar.

Doing a google search turned up this this fascinating article on Columbia's Jewish history, in which J. Rubin & Son played a part along with many other familiar names.

The building is apparently still owned by the Rubin family, or a real estate company associated with them anyway. I'm not sure what happened to the building to make it "Unsafe". Looking through the door, it does not appear that there has been a fire or any major damage (though it is a bit of a look into history -- the vintage fan looks especially nice!).