Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Commenter Bill Chisolm has this to say about Eden's Foods:

Anybody old enough to remember the old Edens Food Stores in Columbia and around S.C. They sold out to Winn-Dixie around 1955. I worked for them as did my father.
Several of the old buildings are still standing, among these are the ones on Rosewood Drive, North Main Street, Devine St, Harden St. and I am sure there are others. They were the place to shop for groceries in Columbia during their hey day

Being born late in 1960, I had never heard of the place, but the city directory for 1953 does list eight locations for the store, with this building being one of them. I would say it has been remodeled several times, but it does seem about the right shape and size for an older grocery.

Apparently the company was run by a local family as the city directory also lists

J. Drake Edens President-Treasurer
Joe Edens, Executive Vice President-Assistant Treasurer
J. Drake Edens, Jr., Vice President

I wonder if there is any connection there with Edens & Avant property management?

I noticed this interesting little house-store driving on Leesburg Road back in September. It's plainly a 1960s era house (though with a picturesque old shed out back) lightly re-purposed into an eclectic botique. The last version of the web site archived at archive.org is from 2007, so I'm going to use that as a closing date. According to that site, the store

was established in [2004] and had been responsible for providing outstanding African American artwork, figurines, mens and ladies clothing and an assortment of others items ever since. Our specialty is in the area of Hard to find, or one of a kind artwork and figurines.

They also had author appearances and book signings.

I kind of got lost in-between Leesburg Road and The Sumter Highway that day, and noticed that although the Leesburg Road area is still really hurting, there is also a lot of new housing back in there, so perhaps business will pick up in the area once we get out of the current slump.

Corked at Sandhill is out of business. Their web site is still up and announces the closing, though it doesn't list the actual final day. I have no idea of Corked's circumstances, but it seems to me that, in general, Sandhill would be a poor place for a beer and wine shop in that it's not near home, or on the way home, or easy to get into and out of if it is on your way home. I would think 9 times out of 10, it would just be easier to stop by a grocery store -- Sandhill is a shopping destination, not somewhere to zip into and out of.

(Hat tip to commenter Cheryl)

Well, another "traditional" hardware store bites the dust. According to this story in The State, the same owners had to close one in Blythewood around the same time. The reasons look to be the usual ones: The economy in general, and the rise of the big box stores

This store in particular I think would have been hard hit by the later as both Lowes and Home Depot are in very close proximity.

(Hat tip to commenter Jason for the heads-up and commenter Javier for the closing date)

Gaz-Bah was on Wilson Boulevard (what North Main becomes as it gets near to I-20 and heads to Blythewood) right next to the long defunct Denny's restaurant, and was open until fairly recently. I'm not sure when it closed, but the branding is still up, and the gas pumps have yet to be taken out. I find it a little odd that they felt it necessary to board the store completely up, given that the aforementioned Denny's has survived in good shape for years with no apparent vandalism.

As I was taking these pictures, one of those erratic Fall flocks of birds was in the area, moving from the high, I-20 visible sign to the roof of the store to the roof of the pump carport and back again. You never realize how many there are until they all take wing at the same time in Hitchcockian fashion.

I'm not sure why an exit gas station off a high traffic Interstate would go under, but I will note that the exit from I-20 to Wilson is a bit odd in that you come out on the other side of the street than you expect, and would then have to make a left to get to Gaz-Bah, while there is a travel plaza directly in front of you that requires no turn.

This Food Lion at the corner of Clemson and Hard Scrabble Roads ("The Crossings") has been closed at least since 14 Jan 2010 when commenter Jason noted it, so I'm guessing it probably moved late in 2009. According to commenter Elizabeth, it moved to a location on Hard Scrabble Road. I didn't go looking for that since driving out there today confirmed to me (once again!) how painful it is to move around in the Clemson and Hard Scrabble areas.

Surprisingly given all the store closings they have done in Columbia, the Blockbuster video rental store is still open in this hard to get to location. I don't wish them any ill, but I went ahead and took some pictures of the store that I suspect I'll need at some point.

UPDATE 8 March 2019 -- This whole plaza is being redone:

This attractive little building is at the intersection of Leesburg Road and Fairmont Drive. With its vertical bisecting brick riser, it would seem to date from the same architectural era as Sunshine Cleaners and this Augusta Road service station, and in fact this property valuation gives the construction date as 1963.

I feel sure it started as a gas station, and judging from the island out front, was still one, albeit in a different format, when it closed. I'm not sure when that was. For some reason, I thought that restaurant "A" stickers had dates on them, but that apparently is not the case. At any rate, it wasn't too long ago, as the building still has some non-essential items inside with signs that it is looked in on from time to time.

Carzzz is yet another vacant used car lot on Two Notch Road. The name makes me think of those rip-off movies you find in the cheap bin at Wal-Mart or at The Dollar Store where you're supposed to think you're getting a Disney movie, and instead it's some Eastern-European knockoff. Lightning McQueen it's not..

This building, on the northwest corner of Two Notch Road and Beltline Boulevard, was once, in the not too distant past, a Payless Shoe Source, despite striking me as a very odd location for such. In fact, the location is awkward for most uses as it is fairly hard to get into and out of.

The Carzzz web site is still online (and copyright 2010). It's interesting that the picture they use there does not have the old UK style telephone booth on the corner of the store sidewalk. I wonder what the story of that is? I have a dim memory that the nearby Chappy's Authentic English Fish & Chips may have had such a thing, but even if it that were true, I'm not sure how it would end up there.

UPDATE 23 December 2011 -- Work is ongoing here, but no indication of what is coming next:

I have some pictures of the sad fate of the British phonebooth I need to upload too.

UPDATE 10 January 2012 -- As mentioned, here are some pix of the demise of the phonebooth, from 1 October 2011:

UPDATE 25 January 2012 -- As reported by commenter Andrew, this is to be a dental clinic. In fact, as I was in the area yesterday, they were preparing to replace the banner type sign for Family Dental with a permanent sign -- something that was accomplished the next time I drove by (though I did not get a picture of it). With the opening of this clinic, the corner of Two Notch and Beltline will have two dental operations, as the old Eckerd on the opposite side of the street is now Small Smiles dental clinic.

UPDATE 28 January 2012 -- All the signage is up:

UPDATE 27 February 2019: Add tags and map icon.

I posted about Friedman's Columbia Mall store here, and I suspect the same story applies to this one, in Garners Ferry Crossing.

In brief, Friedman's went bankrupt, came out, and then went under again in 2008. A few stores bought by another company stayed open as Friedman's until that company went under, a bit later in 2008. Actually, you could probably guess that the company went under by looking at the storefront. Companies that are still in business like to take their signs off of failed stores so their branding doesn't take a hit.

It's interesting how in this one little plaza, not more than a few years old, they've already had 1, 2, 3 other visits from the reaper.

UPDATE 25 October 2018: Add tags, add map icon, update post title format.

For a while in the 1970s, we were a Mercury family: Mercury Comet to be exact. The first car of my father's that I can remember was some sort of 1950s Plymouth, very rounded -- and that's just about all I can remember about it. The first car of my mother's I remember was what I believe actually was her first car: A 1950s Willis.

I remember that one much better than the Plymouth since my father drove his to work while our mother dragged us everywhere in the WIllis. In particular I can recall that the Willis had a manual choke, a radio with tubes that took forever to warm up and never really worked right, and that when the rear floor fell out, my uncle replaced it with some sort of grate, and we could watch the road under the car as we rode along in the back seat.

When the Plymouth keeled over, my father bought our first Mercury Comet. It was an early 60s model, a white coupe with pseudo tail-fins, and he had aftermarket seat-belts installed, making it our first car with them. (Not that we ever used them). Then, when the Willis became a Willisn't, my mother got a late 60s or early 70s Comet coupe as well.

I don't remember too much negative about my father's Comet (and again, it was not the one we kids rode in much), but my mother's was a constant source of repair bills. We bought it at about the time Detroit was forgetting how to make cars in general, and three-on-the-tree cars in particular. They would still sell you one, of course, but Ford seemed to have no real idea how to build a clutch or manual transmission, and the dealer certainly had no idea how to fix one. Even leaving aside the transmission, the car had a host of issues like the radiator heat sensor that left us stranded on US-301 somewhere between here and Florida, and the cigarette lighter that almost set the car on fire despite the fact that nobody smoked. Add to that the whole "coupe" concept when trying to run a car pool, and admittedly, the unsightly mess of cables I added trying to compensate for the lack of a radio by jury-rigging a cassette player didn't help matters.

At some point my parents completely lost faith in the dealer (I don't think it was Stivers), and we started taking the cars to Bob Andrews on Harden Street, but in the end it was Mercury that converted us to a Toyota family.

Early this summer, Ford lost faith in Mercury as well, and announced that the brand would be phased out by the end of 2010. Interestingly, by then, Stivers had already lost the concession. This 2009 year end story from The State is a little vague on exactly what happened, but says that the Lincoln-Mercury concession was moving from Stivers to Classic Ford. However the article also says that the Stivers location would remain open, selling sell Mitsubishis and Subarus and was looking to add another brand as well. Apparently that didn't work out, and as of late September the mercury was falling and the whole corner lot was up for sale.

UPDATE 2 July 2011 -- Here are some night shots of the place from 24 October 2010:

UPDATE 22 June 2013 -- It's now an Enterprise Rent-A-Car: