Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Dick Smith is the latest dealership to abandon Beltline Boulevard. This location is just past the PIggly Wiggly and almost across the street from the former Newsome Chevvy World.

The new location opened just a little while ago at 9940 Two Notch Road:

This, of course is the location of the former Brickyard Shopping Center, which was totally razed for the Dick Smith buildings.

UPDATE 23 December 2011 -- As reported in the comments, the former Dick Smith on Beltline has been demolished:

LoopNet says this store was once a Piggly Wiggly, but it's the Harris Teeter label-scar most visible on the side of the building next to CVS.

For some reason, I always get Harris Teeter and Winn Dixie confused, and I had it in my mind that HT had abandoned South Carolina when that was actually WD. However, it does appear that Harris Teeter has abandoned Columbia. Their store locator shows the closest location as being around Rock HIll.

Currently this whole plaza is mostly empty except for the CVS and some sort of bank back-office-looking building. That's a little surprising given that it serves Polo Road, which I tend to think of as an upscale area, and not really in line with the Food Lion which anchors the next plaza on Two Notch, on the other side of Polo.

UPDATE 27 February 2014 -- This is to be a Planet Fitness gym:

While I was stuck in traffic Wednesday afternoon on Two Notch at I-77, I noticed that Golf Headquarters, in the old Galaxy World building, is gone, or has been bought out.

The signs for Edwin Watts Golf are still quite temporary looking, and I'm pretty sure I drove that stretch in daylight quite recently, so I'm calling early this month as the changeover date. It continues to amaze me how much commercial activity is centered around the most boring game in the world -- (with apologies to my college roommate..)

UPDATE 7 January 2013: Fix street address from 7813 to 7814. Add pictures.

Wine And Dine In Elegance -- The ad is from the 1970 Southern Bell phonebook, and continues the tradition of restaurants being generally open later in those days than now. King Arthur's also continues the theme started here a few weeks about Medieval English themed restaurants in Columbia. The ad doesn't give you much idea what to expect, but surely they must have had round tables and drinking grails..

I have to admit I have absolutely no memory of King Arthur's. That stretch of Broad River road was one we practically never took in the 1970s, and I would have had my nose in a book at any rate. The property is owned by Wray now though the don't seem to use the 725 street number. I'm not sure if they building is King Arthur's or if that was knocked down. The current building doesn't look much like a restaurant to me.

After King Arthur's, the place was at least two other restaurants. Mother Tuckers apparently ran from 1992 to 1995, and I have no information on Pizza Bistro other than one site believes it was a music venue.

UPDATE 6 April 2011 -- Well, from all the comments I found that the above pictures focus on the wrong Wray lot, and that King Arthur's was more on the other side of Riverhill Circle on the lot where the curvy white Wray building now is. The pictured building is 100 Greystone Boulevard and a former Heilig-Meyers furniture store until its closure in 2001. This ad is from the Feb 1997 Bellsouth phonebook:

UPDATE 9 April 2011 -- Commenter Dick sends this yearbook picture posed in front of King Arthur's:

Gibson Uniforms was in the little strip mall at the top of the hill where Two Notch Road and Pine Belt Road intersect. It's a fairly new development, but has never really seemed to thrive. The Food Lion which moved from the other side of Beltline and Family Dollar do good business, but the other storefronts seem to turn over fairly often.

At some point in 2010, according to their sign, and the 2010 & 2011 phonebooks, Gibson relocated to Fashion Place on Decker Boulevard, countering several closings there.

UPDATE 8 July 2011: Added picture of their new storefront in Fashion Place

For most of my life, this building was a Gulf Station and was our default family choice for gas and light service.

After the place closed as a Gulf, it seemed to go through several phases that I am now hazy on. In particular, I think there was a period after it was a full service station and before Circle K when it was still a gas-only station, but without service. During this period, the service bays were closed, but the car-wash bay was still in operation, and you could get a code to with each fill-up to go through the wash.

Circle K took over the place in sort of a half-hearted way. They never really committed to making the place a "modern" convenience store, and the service and wash bays remained walled off, but unconverted, forcing the convenience operation into a really small cramped space. In particular, they never put in interior bathrooms as all stores now do, and the old Gulf restrooms on the Trenholm Road side of the station remained the only ones (though they were never ADA-ed).

Though the place remained my default gas station, there were some inconvenient touches to that aspect as well. First they gradually closed off the Trenholm Road door. At first sometimes you would go and it would be open and sometimes it would be locked, then finally it was always locked. Second, they took the pump locks off the pump handles. That meant you had to hold the pump handle throughout the whole fueling operation. I think some places feel this is a safety issue, but I say that's bunk. Thirdly, from time to time, they seemed to have the slowest pumps in SC. On those days, I think if I had not pre-paid, I would have just driven off rather than wait for the gentle trickle to creep up to $20. (Of course nothing *creeps* to $20 nowdays..)

Initially when the place was a Union 76, even though the store itself was technically a Circle K, they signage played up the 76 affiliation, and the Circle K branding was almost invisible. Sometime last fall, they completely, and messily, disaffiliated from Union 76, knocking out the logo panel on their street sign, and pasting Circle K branding on the pumps (take off the pumps now that the CK is closed).

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

UPDATE 23 May 2011 -- various pictures as below:

On 17 May, it appeared that the underground tanks were being pumped dry:

On 18 May, they started digging up the underground tanks. Hopefully all those holes in the tanks were made during the excavation:

By 21 May, the tanks had been carted off:

By 22 May, the hole has been partly filled in, the pumps are off in the corner, and the next step is unclear. Knock the building down? Start an interior refit?

UPDATE 16 June 2011 -- Hmm. New sign, and it appears that the building is slated to be torn down. A ground lease is a type of lease where the tennant gets to build on the land during the lease period, and of course build-to-suit means a new building as well. Looking at the supports for the canopy on the Trenholm Road side, it appears that they have already decided that backing into things doesn't matter anymore..

UPDATE 18 July 2011 -- Well, demolition has started. Already the canopies have been knocked down. They haven't torn into the building itself as far as the walls go, but it sure doesn't look like it's long for the world:

UPDATE 19 July 2011 -- Well the end has come! Interestingly, the bathrooms were the last piece left standing. I shot some video of them knocking down part of the bathroom wall, but it didn't come out:

UPDATE 19 July 2011: The whole building is down now. Also added first pic of Circle K logo at top:

UPDATE 20 July 2011: Add 18 July 2011 photoset below.

UPDATE 21 July 2011: Today they knocked down the street sign and the trailer is gone. (No pix yet). Also I added the 19 July photoset below.

UPDATE 23 September 2011 -- Well, the place is apparently to be a Circle K again according to the new sign in the lot. And in the meantime, the old chargecard sign hangs on..

UPDATE 5 May 2012 -- It appears that new construction has finally started, or at least excavation:

UPDATE 21 May 2012 -- Landscaping and excavation continue and now they have boarded out the foundations for part of the new construction. Apparently they will be building in what was green space in the former Bell's Drive-In as well as the old Gulf/Circle K lot. At least my memory is that Gulf & Bell's sort of shared a parking lot, but that Bell's itself sat in this little strip between the gas station and the drugstore which never had a building after Bell's was torn down:

UPDATE 2 June 2012 -- The new underground tanks are going in:

UPDATE 6 June 2012 -- Looks like it's going to be a fairly small building:

UPDATE 17 August 2012 -- The new building is almost ready to open. In fact, I saw a car pull up to the "Redbox" and apparently rent a movie:

UPDATE 12 September 2012 -- The construction is finished, and the new store is open. I was conflicted as to whether I should mark the post as "open again" given that it is a completely new building, but in the end I did. If it ever closes again though, it will get a separate closing..

PHOTOSETS

Photoset 18 July 2011
Photoset 19 July 2011
Photoset 20 May 2012

UPDATE 29 March 2023: Adding map icon & updating tags.

This vacancy is in the little strip mall across the street from Dutch Square, and just north of Palmetto Fine Cleaners.

You can see that the marquee is kept water-tight by reversing a sign for Integrity Tax & Bookkeeping. As far as I can tell, they are still around at 1230 Broad River Road (and in this year's phonebook) after having moved to another Broad River Road location in-between. I'm not sure when they would have been here, but it was probably a good while ago as googling for 1724 turns up Arch Paging instead. I think they have been gone a good while as well though, as in the phonebooks I have available at home, they are listed in the Feb 1997 one, but not the Feb 2007 edition. Of course, it's probably not a coincidence that the pager market essentially disappeared during that interval..

Here's a little 1940s building by the tracks at the start of Huger Street (that's you-gee street for you out-of-towners..), that has been, I'm sure, many more things than this list over the years since it was built.

To be honest, I have to say I can't personally remember any of them. It's a section of street I drive very seldom, and some of the tenants, for instance, a roofer, are pretty invisible until you actually need one. The most recent operation seems to have been The Dog Shack hotdog restaurant, which apparently set up shop in April of 2010, and was definitely open as late as 18 June 2010, when a group of Columbia hotdog aficionadoes visited and gave it a mediocre grade.

While I was taking pictures a train rolled through, backing up traffic on Huger. I imagine working all day in that location would get old pretty quick.

It looks like Elegante Wig Gallery, in the old Electrolux location on Devine Street has closed. I'm the wrong gender (and still have my hair so far..) so there's not much more I can say about it, other than it was not there too long as seemingly it started around 2008.

I never heard G-E-X pronounced Gee-Eee-Eks as the spelling here would imply. It was always just "Gex" to rhyme with "Vex". Not that I heard about it that often. Given the 21 Dec 1969 phonebook listing (ie: for 1970) above, it sounds like it was a Costco or Sam's before its time -- certainly we did not have a membership, and I never went with anyone who did. (There are some pictures of the membership cards here.)

The building (behind Applebee's just North of I-20) is certainly massive, and it seems to have had a department for everything, including groceries and meat, which really makes it sound ahead of its time. Wikipedia says G-E-X was another label for G.E.M the Government Employees Mart and that the electronics department eventually morphed into Circuit City by way of Ward's. The December 1972 phonebook is the last one to list the Columbia G-E-X which meshes with Wikipedia's claim that the chain went under "during the discount store shakeout of 1973".

After G-E-X the spot seems to have been a number of different operations including Home Quarters and Blue Cross. In fact, LoopNet says Blue Cross has a lease on the whole building that lasts until September 2012. Currently the building seems to be empty, with the last branding on the street sign as Palmetto GBH which seems to be some sort of Medicare related operation (their sign is still on the storefront in the LoopNet listing).

UPDATE 21 March 2011: Added "Intertec Data Systems" & "Phar-Mor" to the post title. Those apparently closed in the early 1980s and 3 October 1992 respectively. (Also fixed spelling of Applebee's..)

UPDATE 6 April 2011: Added the 1970 Bellsouth Yellow Pages ad for the pharmacy department (which apparently was open to the general public).