Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

V.I.C. Fashions was in the little Food Lion/Rite Aid strip shopping center in-between Decker Park Road and Brookfield Road. I don't know what V.I.C. stood for, but according to their still extant Myspace page:

We specialize in urban wear, New fashions, shoes, novelty items, anything thats hot, we have! From Request to Diesel, we have all the latest designs and fashion in stock.

I like the facade and walkway of this plaza. It has an old-time look sort of as I recall the original Forest Lake Shopping Center looking.

There was an interesting story in The State about this place a few days ago and how it has been there over 50 years. It seems the current owners do want to retire, but that the usual Main Street problems and changes in dress habits may have hastened that.

I have an uncle who's quite accomplished at woodworking, but I myself can't drive a nail straight, and had no idea there was a woodworking supply shop in Sunset Court.

As of Saturday, the closing sale was apparently still going, so screw up your resolve, think a bit, hammer out a plan, pick a route and hop a plane on over there before it's awl gone and you just have to think of what mitre been.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry).

UPDATE 8 September 2012 -- The place is now The Karate Dojo. (Also added the Sunset Court sign above)

New location:

Commenter Chiefa mentioned this closing last week, but I am happy to report that this specialized boutique has simply moved to 3308 Forest Drive, beside Richland Mall and in the same strip and just up from the former Wild Birds Unlimited location.

(Hat tip to commenter Chiefa)

UPDATE 2 March 2024: Fixed spelling of 'boutique'. Added map icon and updated tags.

Well, this closing lets me exercise the Cent (¢) sign we discussed just yesterday!

You can't fault this place for locking themselves into anything -- as long as they had one item in the store that was less than a dollar, they were within their operating parameters. Apparently it didn't help. Decker Center is one of a number of little strip malls down the west side of Decker Boulevard, many nowdays run by immigrants -- Decker, in fact, is designated as Columbia's "International Corridor".

According to this PDF 99 Cents had a 2010 business license, but I'm going to say it didn't make it too far into 2010, because I've been noticing the empty storefront for a while now.

Does anyone remember if this is the strip mall that had Columbia's first CD store?

Well, it's back to Park Centre at Two Notch & Polo Roads for this former Pic 'N Pay Shoes. You can pretty much make out the label-scar with the name if you look at it with charity, though there seems to be some issue with the street address. The Feb 1997 Bellsouth phonebook lists the Pic 'N Pay at 9714 Two Notch while the pasted letters clearly mark this unit as "9710 STE 5". However, Park Centre apparently encompasses 9710 through 9714, so it's all the same property whether they may have moved down a unit at some point.

They won't have moved after 2000 though, as the whole Pic 'N Pay chain filed for bankruptcy in March of that year. Apparently this was their second trip into Chapter 11, after one in 1996, and this one ended up in liquidation (and selling a lot of assets to Shoe Show).

Google says that 9710 #5 was also Top Nail nail salon at some point. I would say after Pic 'N Pay as nail salons seem to specialize in making a go out of failing properties.

Cribb's Bakery was a longtime Five Points landmark and yet another Columbia institution I never got around to visiting. Looking at the ad from the 1997 Bellsouth phonebook, I think I could have gone for some of the bagels or pastries though pound cake I'm not so keen on. I figured I would always have time, but on Sunday 30 March 2003, the place caught fire.

According to The State's archives:

Cribb's Bakery, 1030 Harden Street, was damaged Sunday in a fire that apparently originated in the building's storage room.

Plumes of smoke billowed from the attic of the peach and blue building around 9 p.m., but there was no visible structural damage.

Battalion Chief Cleveland Geter said the fire was contained to the one room, and firefighters had it contained in 10 to 15 minutes.

Despite the story's optimistic take on the scope of the damage, the bakery never reopened, and in September of 2004 the current tenant, Time Warner Cable started work to move in, as The State reported on 9 December 2004:

Time Warner to move to Harden Street site

Time Warner of the Midlands planned to begin renovations this week to the old Cribbs Bakery on Harden Street, converting it into a roomier retail and office space.

I had assumed the old bakery building was torn down for the TWC office, but it would appear from this that it was not.

In a companion closing to yesterday's, commenter Andrew sends these before (8 April 2011) and after (15 April 2011) pictures of the Blockbuster on Emanuel Church Road, saying:

This is located in West Columbia at the intersection of Emmanuel Church & Old Barnwell Road. The Street address is 2916B Emmanuel Church Road. It is in a shopping center called Sandy Ridge Square, anchored by Bi-Lo.

Thank you, Andrew. I confess that I had to plug the address into google maps and then zoom out twice before I had any idea of where Emanuel Church Road was.

(Andrew offers a hat tip to commenter Thomas for the heads-up)

UPDATE 5 October 2020: Change post address to "2926 Emanuel Church Road Suite B" from "2916-B Emanuel Church Road" for consistency. Update tags, add map icon.

Well, here is yet another Blockbuster Video closing. It's the same old story about competition with Netflix, Redbox and various video-on-demand services, but it seems that there have been some new developments since I last did a Blockbuster closing.

For one thing, according to Wikipedia, the chain went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September of 2010. I had heard that, but I had not heard that their plan for coming out of bankruptcy failed. That does surprise me a bit. I figured they would emerge from bankruptcy, and then fail again. The Wikipedia article says that on 1 March 2011, the Justice Department moved to force them into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, ie: liquidation.

Then another unlikely event intervened, and just a few weeks ago, on 28 March 2011, Dish Network bought Blockbuster:

The Denver Post reported that Dish, a Denver-based satellite-TV firm, plans to use the assets to enhance its subscription offerings and start streaming video and shipping DVDs, in order to compete with Netflix. Analysts say such a move would present a number of challenges for Blockbuster, that it would require renewing studio deals, securing streaming rights and building out the needed infrastructure.

(Hat tip to commenter chiefa)

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This small nursery was on The Charleston Highway before it joins up with Knox Abbott Drive. These pictures are from mid September, and the going out of business sign is already up, but it seems to me that activity continued there for several more months -- I had some later pictures, but I can't put my hands on them right now.

The few times I've wanted to buy some plants, the first thing that always occurs to me is the garden department at Lowe's or Home Depot, and I suspect those big-box operations have really hurt these independent operations.

UPDATE 13 July 2012 -- Here's a few more pictures of the place I just found hiding on my drive: