Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I don't ever remember this PIggly Wiggly, now a furniture store, being in operation, but then we didn't go down South Beltline much growing up. The building has a classic 1960s look, and I'm happy to see that Kimbrell & Sons have kept the raised marquee letters along the roof-line.

This store is similar in size to the old Trenholm Park Pig which also had the roof letters back in the day. I'm not sure why the store closed, but there's a newer Pig about half a mile up South Beltline, so I'll speculate that this stand-alone operation was axed in favor of locating in what would have been at the time a new strip mall, and which is closer to the Two Notch corridor as well.

Google is a wonderful thing. I had been noticing this lot ever since I moved back to town, and I felt like I should remember what it was, but I never quite could. I had in my mind that it had been a car dealership, and that may have been correct, given what's left inside now, but the architecture didn't look right for that as a first use.

Plugging the (very visible) street address into Google though reveals that it started life as a Food Lion. In fact, we can find out that it was buit in 1978, has 22,056 square feet available on a 2.34 acre lot, and can be all yours for $900,000.. I can even now tell you that the latitude & longitude for the place are 34.034074 & -81.004620!

I also find that as a Food Lion, the store had followed a practice I dislike: getting it's Deli department into local restaurant listings. I feel the same way about groceries that use their deli to get onto the Interstate "Dining" exit signs.

I don't know exactly what happened to this Food Lion. I know that in the 80s, one of the network news magazine shows did a hit piece on Food Lion that hurt them quite a bit at the time. Perhaps that had an impact here. Perhaps they were planning the new store down Two Notch towards Pinestraw even then. In general I find Food Lions of this era to be a bit dingy and downmarket. Their newer stores are quite nice however -- the one at the South Causeway at Pawleys Island is excellent and even has Virgil's Root Beer. And here's a tip: Almost all Food Lion's have regularly cleaned, nice bathrooms in the left rear corner of the store -- good to know driving in a strange area!

It was drizzling while I took these shots, and the closing-cam works much better in bright sunshine, so the lot and building are not as depressing as they look here.

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Updated the closing date to 1997 based on the comments.

I've written about Kroger Sav-On before. I believe the fate of this Kroger, near the Wal-Mart on Highway 1 near I-26 came about for similar reasons.

When Kroger first hit the Columbia market (and I believe this store, like Decker & Fort Jackson, was in the initial build-out), it was upscale, but by the time these stores closed, it had been leapfrogged by other chains' new generations. This store in particular has a nice new Bi-Lo across the street from it, and a Wal-Mart Supercenter just a block or two away. So (and this is all pure speculation), they weren't as nice as the Bi-Lo, and couldn't be as cheap as the Wal-Mart. Kroger's answer, in general, has been new stores like the one near Spring Valley High School, but that requires new construction.

Anyway, I noticed the other day that the building is no longer empty -- Kimbrell's furniture has set up there now. That's good to see, and I wish something would take the buildings on Fort Jackson & Decker!

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Changed closing date to 2000 based on commenter Andrew's research. Also added full street address.

This Winn-Dixie was located in a hard-luck strip mall on the "troubled" Decker Boulevard corridor. Prior to the store's locating there, the physical plant of the building it went into had really been in bad shape since the long-ago departure of its predecessor (whose name I can't recall right now). Winn-Dixie put a lot of work into the building, and it looked like the mall would come to life again as it attracted a few new businesses, including Columbia stalwart, The Book Exchange.

What my family found really notable about the store's opening was the blast of publicity they paid for: They mailed everyone in the area a custom produced 10 minute VHS casette to promote the store and all its features. That must have cost them a pretty penny (now I suppose they would just mail a postcard with their web-site address, though I suppose since that would be less notable, people would be less likely to actually follow it up..).

Out of curiosity, my sister & I watched the tape which had been sent to my father. I know the impression I got from the tape was that the store was very upscale with an extensive deli department. I was surprised when I actually dropped by the store to find that it was very average. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, and I wouldn't hesitate to stop if I were in the area and remembered I needed something, but it was definitely less upscale than other non-FoodLion stores in the general area (Publix for instance).

Still, I think it did well enough, and was a solid tenant for the struggling plaza. Unfortunately, the whole Winn-Dixie chain got in big trouble in 2004 and completely exited North & Suth Carolina, leading to the store's closure, and the plaza started going downhill again. The Book Exchange in fact moved back to almost the same spot on Two Notch that it had moved from to begin with. Lately things have stablized a bit with the Comedy House moving (after a hiatus) from its Saint Andrews Road location into half of the Winn-Dixie, and a bingo operation subsuming the other half as well as the Book Exchange spot and several other spots
on the other side. At this point only the huge sign behind the old store remains to say that Winn-Dixie was once there. (Though that itself is a bit unusual: Chains that are still operating usually take care to remove their branding from failed locations).

UPDATE 11 March 2011: Updated closing date to 24 August 2005 based on here.

UPDATE 28 August 2018 -- There is now a plasma center in the left part of the old store that was Bingo. (The Comedy House is still in the main portion):

For some reason, when I was in middle-school, I loved popcorn to a degree I never had before or have since. I mean, I still like it, but I probably don't have it more than half a dozen times a year now while back then I had it every day. As soon as I got home from school, I would get out the popcorn popper (no microwave then!), the butter-salt, a big glass of ice-tea and a book. I would sit at the kitchen table and eat popcorn with one hand, and turn pages with the other (I was careful not to get my books greasy!).

Popcorn was not a regular purchase item for my mother's shopping trips. She didn't keep a tab on the status of the bag of popping corn or the level of the butter-salt shaker, so unless I remembered to ask her to get some, I ended up having to make supply runs on my own. Fortunately, there was The Pig.

The Piggly Wiggly on Covenant Road near Trenholm Park had been there as long as I could recall, and unlike a trip to Trenholm Plaza, getting to it from our house required crossing no major roads so my parents had been OK for years with me riding my bike there. I would ride down Oakwood to Satchel Ford to Bethel Church to Covenant and park my bike on the left side of the store. (Back then I didn't lock it, now I probably would). The Pig was a small store, nothing special really, in fact my mother rarely shopped there because they packed their produce on trays under cling wrap so you really couldn't see how fresh it was, but aside from the popcorn it had another draw for me: a book "spinner" rack.

Stocking for racks like this was always hit-or-miss, but apparently the distributor/jobber who had responsibility for The Pig's rack in those days had a taste for science fiction (or maybe he got some kind of discount -- who knows?). At any rate, there were usually new DAW paperbacks in the rack -- those were the days of the white page borders and the Kelly Freas covers:

If I had the money (iffy..), I could always come home with a new book to read with my popcorn.

In later years, I moved out of town and lost close track with The Pig, but apparently it had some rather interesting times before it finally closed. If I recall the story my sister or father told me, at one point it was closed for a while and then got a new owner who refused to stock any beer or wine for religious reasons. (I recall thinking that was an odd amount of leeway for a chain to give to an individual store..). In the end, the market changed, and it was really too small and old a building to compete with the new wave of upscale grocers and probably too close to The Pig on Forest Drive to make sense for the chain (and that Pig is noticably upscale itself). Half of the building now houses a Dollar General (they have the best peppermints I've ever found, by the way, at least since altoids changed their recipie) while the other half is empty.

And darn it, it was fun to say "I'm going to hop to the pig".

UPDATE 28 July 2010: Added full street address to post tile, and the fact that this was store "No. 98" as well. Added graphic (and link to) The Lion Game.

UPDATE 4 May 2011: Changed closing date in the post title to February 2005 based on commenter Andrew's research.

UPDATE 17 October 2011 -- Well they have finally found a tenant for some of the vacant space. It appears we will get a new pizza parlor, Milano Pizza:

UPDATE 26 January 2012 -- The pizzeria is open:

Lately the thing to do rather than remodeling an aging store is to simply build a bigger one right next door and move shop.

That's what happened to this Piggly Wiggly on Garners Ferry Road. The trouble with that, although it gives me something to take pictures of, is that it leaves behind a dead or dying strip mall as seems to be the case with "Garners Ferry Plaza". On the other hand, I would in general rather shop in a store like the new one (seen across the street in the last photo) than in a run-down store, and building a new store avoids a lengthy period of remodeling which can drive away customers. A remodeling store, even one open for business is like a road with ongoing construction -- you know you could get through, but you'd rather plan another route and avoid the hassle.

UPDATE 3 March 2010 -- some sort of work is being done on the old Pig and plaza:

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Updated closing date based on the comments (and added full street address).

UPDATE 16 July 2013 -- Garners Ferry Plaza has ben renovated now, including the former Pig site:

Also, The Pig is closing at its new location.

I noticed the other day that this Food Lion on Taylor Street just above Two Notch is closed. I know that Benedict has been doing a lot the last few years to try and upgrade the area a bit (the new sports stadium on Two Notch being the biggest part of this), and it's unclear (to me) if this closing reflects a success or failure. The sign in the window is a bit ambiguous, but it seems to tilt towards this being an upfit for this Food Lion location (and Food Lion has been doing some nice work remodelling their older stores). On the other hand, going businesses tend to bend over backwards to stay open during remodelling (I'm pretty sure the Pawleys Island Food Lion was open during the course of its remodelling), and there's no sign in the window to the effect of "Pardon our Progress!" or "Changing to Serve You Better!", so we'll see.

UPDATE 28 Jan 2010: The place is now "Allen University Mall", so not Benedict at all. Also, added the street address to the post title.

UPDATE 17 March 2010 -- Here's a picture after the remodel:

UPDATE 20 Oct 2010: Added "Store #719" to post title.

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Changed closing date based on discussion in the comments.

I recall that when I was around 6 or 7, Midlands Plaza ran a promotion to get shoppers out during the weekend. There was some sort of ride to entice the children, and the whole thing was promoted on WIS radio. Midlands wasn't where we normally shopped, but I bugged my mother until she took me out to experience the much ballyhooed kiddy-ride. I can't remember what it was now except that it was small, groundbased and freestanding (to make it easier to transport from promotion to promotion, I suppose). I have the impression that it was supposed to hop around the parking lot, but really it didn't matter, because they could not get it started. Apparently there was a gas motor in there somewhere, because they kept pulling on a lawn-mower-like starting cord, and occasionaly the thing would sputter a few strokes, but it would never fire up. And that is a metaphor for the history of Midlands Plaza.

I don't know if this is actually the case, but Midlands Plaza seems to have been conceived as a sister site to Trenholm Plaza (perhaps even the reverse was true?), with a Post Office and A&P anchoring a choice corner site with easy access from major roads, but for some reason the place exhibited a failure-to-thrive for most of the period I can remember. Certainly it was in bad shape by the 70s, bottomed out in the 80s, and has currently come to terms with a post-retail mode of operation.

It is rather appropriate that A&P was the anchor store for Midlands, since that chain itself underwent a similar experience during the same time period. It used to be the case that you could find A&P's distinctive, steeple capped, stores all around Columbia and other area cities. You can still often find the buildings, but the chain itself has withered away. I think part of it was the fact that while grocery stores were getting bigger and bigger, A&P was entrenched in small sites, and didn't make any effort to build bigger until they had finally been leap-frogged by newer chains. Of course for that to happen bespeaks a certain complacency at the management level, perhaps best exemplified by the last A&P advertising campaign that I can recall: A&P: Putting Price & Pride Together Again. It's always risky to run a "we were wrong" campain, and much more so to run a lame "we were wrong" campaign.

After the failure of that campaign, and the closure of the stores at Trenholm & Midlands Plazas, the only other A&P activity I saw in South Carolina was the attempt to establish a "Supercenter" in North Myrtle Beach, something that might have worked if they had done it before Kroger and other big stores moved in, but which in the event went under after no more than a few years. So, with over a hundred years in business, the legacy of A&P, at least in South Carolina, is the (confusing to youngsters, I'm sure) reference in the Waitresses classic "Christmas Wrapping":

A&P has pride in me with the world's smallest turkey..

The store at Trenholm Plaza was torn down and replaced with a Publix, the store at Midlands Plaza became, for a time, Giant Food World (invoking nightmare images of boxcar sized potatoes, and Sequoia-ish brocolli), then I think became a furniture store and finally became empty (but the steeple and wether-vane have withstood the ravages of the years..)

UPDATE: Added picture of old A&P on Sunset Drive.
UPDATE: Added picture of old (but re-roofed & de-steepled) A&P on the Charleston Highway

UPDATE 4 April 2013 -- Well, I wish I had made totally separate posts for all the old A&P buildings, but I was still kind of feeling my way along way back in 2008. That aside, the Midlands Shopping Center A&P building is now gone. Below are pictures from mid 2012 and then March 2013:

I don't know exactly when this Kroger closed, sometime in November is my best estimate. I was just driving by one day, and noticed that it was gone. It had been looking pretty thread-bare the last few times I was in it.

The closing of this location leaves only one of the inital wave of Kroger's entry into the Columbia market still open: the location at the corner of Forest Drive & Beltline Blvd. I remember when Kroger first came to town, it was the store. I was in high-school at the time, and the Decker Blvd location was convient to me when I first started to drive. My recollection is that Kroger was definitely a cut above anything else in town at the time. All of the stores had full bakeries, and a cheese section with more than the standard block chedder I grew up on. They also had small housewares (the second microwave I ever bought came from Kroger) and if they weren't open all night at the time (I can't quite recall) they were certainly open later than most Columbia grocers.

The initial wave was Decker Mall, Bush River Mall, Forest Drive, Fort Jackson Blvd, and US-1 just past Triangle City. I think the Bush River Mall location was the first to go, as that mall never really established itself. The next was the Decker location, a harbinger of the general decline of the Decker corridor. This was followed by US-1 and now by Fort Jackson Blvd.

Part of this wave of closings, aside from the poor location on Bush River was due, in my opinion to the changes in the grocery market. When Kroger came to town, it was up-market, but the next wave of store openings by its competitors trumped that by being even more up-market and Kroger found itself with suddenly dated looking properties that weren't as nice inside as newer competitors. They seem to have elected to compete by building new stores rather than refurbishing older ones, and the store on Two Notch Rd near Spring Valley High is built to their new standards. It will be interesting to see how long the old store on Forest Drive can survive. The new Piggly Wiggly by Cardinal Newman beats it for up-market, and the one-two punch of Publix and Fresh Market at Trenholm Plaza delivers everything other than 24-hour shopping.

UPDATE 5 April 2009

Here is commentor Melanie (looking cute as a button!) with a clown at the grand opening celebration of this store back in the day:

Thanks Melanie!

UPDATE 26 April 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 30 April 2010: Added some more pictures (utility work was ongoing in the parking lot at the time these were taken).

UPDATE 6 February 2012 -- Well, it appears that work on the Whole Foods uplift has begun:

(Also, I have finally got around to adding Family Mart to the post title).

UPDATE 10 May 2012 -- Construction continues in these pictures from 6 March 2012:

The rubble in the final picture above is from the demolition of the old Lucas Machinery building.

Photosets:

Photoset 6 March 2012