Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

What does it mean to say a park is "closed"? Well, the land could be sold and built, there could be a fence to keep people out, or as in the case of Forest Lake Park, it could just have been abandoned by its owners, whoever they were.

Forest Lake Shopping Center is on the corner of Trenholm Road and Forest Drive, directly across Forest from Threnholm Plaza and has had its ups and downs. Originally, the center was anchored by Campbell's Drug Store which was directly on the corner. Down from Campbell's on the storefronts facing Forest were my longtime barbershop, a hardware store and a lot of shops I've completely forgotten. The hardware closed fairly early on (probably by 1970) and at some point a 7-11 moved into that row.

I don't remember much about the storefronts facing away from Forest except that there was a cloth shop at one time, and later some sort of clothing store where I was fitted for a suit once. Across the parking lot from Campbell's, was a small branch bank, denomination forgotten, where my mother often used the drive-through. Behind the bank was a creek, with a footbridge over it leading off into the adjoining neighboorhood.

The Campbell's block of stores was separated from another block by an access cut-through, and this other block was generally more important to us, as the main part of it (now Coplons) was a Colonial grocery store, my mother's favored place to buy groceries. I don't know exactly why this was, as even then, Columbia didn't lack for grocery stores, and there was an A&P right across the road in Trenholm Plaza. The thing I remember is that she was convinced that "Farm Charm" medium-sharp chedder was the only cheese worth buying (she convinced me as well) and "Farm Charm" was available only at Colonial or Big Star groceries. (There was a Big Star abuting the K-Mart on Fort Jackson Blvd). The block of stores with Colonial also held Forest Lake TV, where we had our sets repaired several times, and Sakura Japanese restaurant, which is still there, and must be the oldest Japanese restaurant in Columbia.

Colonial folded (I think) in the late 60s (leaving us to go over to Big Star for cheese..). I don't recall how long it was before Coplon's moved in, but I'm pretty sure it was there before they knocked down the whole Campbell's side of the shopping center (dispossessing my barbers) and put in the new First Citizens and Talbots there. The branch bank had closed by then, and its space is now taken over by a gallery/frame-shop with the outbuildings being sucessfully run by an enterprising garden store.

What does this have to do with the park? Well, my impression always was that the park was run by Colonial as a place for kids to go play while their mothers' shopped. (Yes, in those days, as long as it wasn't across a major road, you could send the kids out of sight to play!). When Colonial went under, the park stopped being maintained. Every now and then, there might be a minor repair, which I imagine the (mostly hard-luck by now) shops being dunned for, but in general there was nothing. The last major thing to happen was the carting off of the swingset, which had been swing-less for years.

Today, there are 3 fixtures. Here are two, the bench and the monkey bars:

Here's a closer look at the monkey bars:

I have a particularly vivid memory of these. Once, when my mother was shopping at Colonial, and my sister & I were playing in the park, I had one of those ideas that seems good at the time and decided that I could probably hang by my knees off of the bars across the top. As it turned out, I could. What I couldn't do, being little more athletic then than now, was get down again. After several increasingly anxious minutes of contemplating a drop onto the ground or the other bars, I sent my sister into Colonial to get my mother, who (the situation probably having been conveyed to her in a garbled manner to sound more alarming than it was) abandoned her cart and came racing around the corner. In the event, I had just figured out how to get down anyway...

Gills Creek forms the backdrop for the park, and I'm a bit surprised that no restaurant on either side of the creek has ever had a creek deck. It's rather peaceful and pleasant:

Here's Gills Creek on the other side of the bridge from the park:

Eightmile Branch forms the back boundry of Forest Lake Shopping Center and here's where it runs into Gills Creek:

Here is the park's third fixture, a merry-go-round:

Of course there is a drawback to having a park (or shopping center for that matter) bordered by creeks: Creeks rise.

Sometime back in the 90s, we had a 100 year flood in Forest Acres. At that point, a lot of Gamewell Drive was under water with parts of Sylvan Drive innundated as well. Given its position at the confluence of Eightmile Branch & Gills Creek, a good bit of Forest Lake Shopping Center was under water (most of the Garden Center area) as was all of the park. One of the local stations, I believe it was WLTX, had a crew in the parking lot shooting footage of the flood. I had to tell them they were looking at a park (I think I got on TV, but I can't recall for sure). At that point, the merry-go-round was completely invisible under at least six inches of water. For some reason, I was walking around in my flip-flops, having parked my car a good ways off. I considered wading out to the merry-go-round to ride a turn around on it to give them a good visual, but decided I wasn't going to risk my feet on who knows what washed up detritus without something more substantial shielding them. I know I took some flood pictures myself, if I ever find them again, I'll get them digitized and post a few.

Anyway, if you want to sit on a bench, climb the monkey-bars, or take a spin on the merry-go-round Forest Lake Park is still there for now..

UPDATE 15 May 2010 -- Here's a pointless quicktime video of the merry-go-round in motion from 26 Aug 2009

And here's Forest Lake Park in the snow from 13 Feb 2010:

UPDATE 10 Feb 2011 -- In April 2010, someone cut down a honking big pine tree, and put the segments around the merry-go-round:

UPDATE 4 April 2013: Tragedy!

I'm guessing that with the continuing renovations at the old Dobbs House/Forest Lake Spirits/Carolina Paws building, somebody noticed the park and the merry-go-round and decided it was a huge liability issue. At any rate, both remaining park fixtures, the merry-go-round and an old park bench have been torn out and the park is now just an empty lot except for the ring of buried bricks around where the merry-go-round used to be:

Here's two shots from my first and only TV interview at the park on 1 March 2011:

UPDATE 25 June 2017 -- Changed the merry-go-round video to a youtube embed rather than a hosted .mov file.

It seems to me there have always been fabric stores on this part of Forest Drive. Even with Rogers Brothers move to Divine, there's still Forest Lake Fabrics across the street near the former Frans. I do think there are fewer in general nowdays though. I suspect people (and to be non politically correct, women mostly) who can sew are a declining breed. When I was little, a fabric store was about the lowest place on the food chain of "stores my mother drags me to". Maybe paint stores with their endless color chips were lower. I haven't been in a fabric store in years, so I don't know if this is still true, but at the time, all the dyes on the fabrics were somewhat volatile so that your eyes would start to tear up almost immediately as you walked in. I don't know how people worked there; I guess they developed immunity. About the only thing to do while my mother looked at bolt after bolt of fabric, was to play under the tables, which for some reason generally seemed to all have a raised platform under the table top. In the cases where the table also had a skirt, you could go under the skirt and sit on the platform and pretend that you were in a little fort. There were generally also a number of yardsticks to play around with, but in the end there was still only so much you could do to keep away the thought that you were in a store with NOTHING BUT CLOTH and that your eyes were watering.

The move of Rogers Brothers adds to the recent loss of Tuesday Morning and leaves Trenholm Plaza with two vacancies. In general the place has either been lucky or well managed over the years, and vacancies have always been made good (even after the fires at Ponderosa and Fresh Market. I hope that continues to be the case.

UPDATE 27 July 2010: Rogers Brothers has now closed after their move.

Well, something is going on at Forest Lake Exxon.

I suppose they could just be upgrading the pumps, but then why take down the gas prices from the sign? And usually in an upgrade like that, they try to do it in stages so that there's never a day when they are completely unable to serve customers.

I looked in the window of the convenience store part of the station, and all the food is still in the coolers, and all the tools are still in the car bays, so I'm unsure what's going on. It would be a shame if this place closed as it is one of the last gas stations around which can actually fix anything. I took a slow leak to them a year or so ago, and they had me patched and out of there in under 15 minutes.

I'll check again when I get back in town and see how it turned out.

UPDATE: Commenter Cha Cha says that a "Five Guys" will replace the Exxon.

UPDATE 30 May 2008:

It's official now:

UPDATE 30 June 2008:

They've stripped the Exxon trim from the "patio" roof and have started work inside:

UPDATE 3 Oct 2008 (with pix from 20 Sep 2008):

Still coming along, and looking pretty good.

UPDATE 17 Nov 08:

Well, 5 Guys is now open:

UPDATE 19 December 2017: Add full street address and tags

UPDATE 1 May 2023: Adding map icon.

I never went inside this location of Tuesday Morning. I had never quite figured out what kind of a store it was supposed to be, except that it didn't seem like somehing I would be interested in, and was rarely open. I finally went inside the Pawleys Island location, and decided that the concept was essentially Big Lots by Martha Stewart, although it wasn't quite as bad as that sounds since there were a number of toys and odd bits of electronics I found interesting.

I don't know the exact date the Trenholm Plaza location closed. Even though I go to the Post Office around the corner almost every day, I hadn't noticed until this morning that Tuesday Morning was gone. Just to see what would happen, I called their number, and it was not disconnected (though noone answered), so I'm guessing the closing was within a month.

It will be interesting to see what goes into that location. Trenholm Plaza has done very well over the last 40 years in remaining viable while other strip malls have gone into decline almost as soon as they opened. (Look, for instance, at Midlands Plaza, which was very similar to Trenholm Plaza in its (brief) heyday).

UPDATE 23 April 2009: First, Tuesday Morning is back on Forest Drive in the old La-Z-Boy store.

And second, Rosso's Italian Restaurant is now open in the old Trenholm Plaza Tuesday Morning storefront. The menu looks promising! (and there's a nice review here)

UPDATE 2 June 2009: Added link to Rosso's review above.

UPDATE 2 Marcy 2023: Updating tags, adding map icon.

UPDATE 18 May 2023: Changing "Trenholm Plaza" to actual street address to post title.

"Liggett's", as we called it, was in Trenholm Plaza more or less where The Fresh Market now is.

Liggett's was a Rexall drugstore, and like most drugstores, carried a good bit of general merchandise. Unlike most drugstores today, it also had a lunch counter, which, unlike Campbell's Drugstore across Forest Drive, boasted booths as well a counter seating. Before the invasion of Columbia by burger chains, Liggett's was one of the most convienient places in Forest Acres to have lunch. We didn't do it that often. I now eat out every day, but growing up, it was more like once or twice a week (almost always for Sunday lunch). I suspect we went to Liggett's when my mother was carting both of us kids around shopping. My clearest memory of eating there is the day my mother made me try ketchup, something she probably came to rue, since after that, I wanted it on everything!

Liggett's also had a now forgotten piece of equipment called a tube-tester. This was a complicated science-fiction looking console studded with tube sockets with a flip chart up above. You would look up your tube on the flip chart, put it in the correct socket, flip the indicated switches to the correct presets, let the tube "warm up" and then hit the test button. If the tube were good, a needle on the test meter would rise into the green zone. If it were bad, the needle would stay in red or amber. I was always pulling discarded radios and TVs from people's curbside trash on the assumption that I could fix them if I replaced the right tubes. There was actually something to this, but since we had several perfectly good radios and a working TV, my parents were generally not inclined to spring for buying new tubes when I found a bad one, and since my weekly allowance was $0.50, I wasn't often in a position to buy one. It was still fun testing though.

I'm a little hazy on exactly what happened to Liggett's. I have some idea that it might have been totally bought by Rexall, dropping the "Liggett's" name and then may have been bought out by Eckards, which definitely did eventually have a store in that general part of Trenholm Plaza. I think Campbell's outlasted it, and there was some sort of drugstore with a lunch counter that lasted at least into the late 80s (on Garner's Ferry), but I think all of the drugstores with lunch counters are gone from Columbia now. Am I wrong?

UPDATE 17 Nov 08: Thanks to commenter Dennis for the graphic of a tube tester. Try doing that with your Ipod!

UPDATE 14 March 2009: Added 1963 Yellow Pages ad.

UPDATE 30 April 2013: Added picture of the Rexall logo from an old sign displayed at the Antique Mall on Broad River Road.

UPDATE 11 October 2013: Here is an amazing picture of the old Trenholm Plaza, with Liggett's. Thanks to commenter Dennis for digging this up!

Bell's was approximately in the location occupied by the Rite-Aid drugstore more or less on the corner of Forest Drive and Trenholm Road. I recall it as being more beind the Gulf station (now a Union 76 mini-mart). Certainly it didn't occupy the whole property now siting Rite-Aid.

Until McDonalds came to town (the Garner's Ferry location was the first), Bell's was the only option in the area for white-bag take out burgers. Both Ligett Rexall in Trenholm Plaza and Campbell's Drugs across the street had lunch counters, but not really take out operations. As I remember, Bell's had no dining area, though there may have been a couple of picnic tables outside. I don't recall the burgers much at all, but I really enjoyed the french-fries. I remember one time thinking that they were so good that I kept taking them into the bathroom to share with my father who was in the shower. He must have thought I was crazy, but he just kept saying thanks.

For some reason, I can't recall specifically noting that Bell's had closed or that the building had been torn down. I think it had happened by the time I started First Grade. Since McDonald's was running a promotion (which it did for years) to the effect that it would give a free burger to any kid with only As & Bs on his report card, McDonalds quickly became the focus of all my burger attention, and I had a kid's indifference to Bell's fate.

UPDATE 22 May 2011: Added a couple of pictures up top to reflect more or less where I recall Bell's as being, off to the side and sort of behind the Gulf.