Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

A while back I realized that I had over 30 years of 35mm negatives that were going to need to be digitized at some point, not to mention 126 Instamatic and 620 Brownie negatives dating into the 1960s. I figured I could nickle & dime myself to death gradually getting them scanned at Ritz or Photoworks.com, or I could bite the bullet, get a negative scanner and do it myself. I ended up with this Nikon negative scanner, and on the whole I've been quite happy with it. The resolution is much higher than I was getting from commercial scanning, though it also takes much longer to scan a roll of negatives than I was expecting.

So anyway, my sister dug up some old negatives from a 1987 signing for her first book, and asked me to scan them. As soon as I saw where the signing was, I knew I was going to want to use some of them here. My second question to her, after asking if I could use the pictures was whether she wanted her name and face blurred, but on reflection that a pretty stupid one. After all, she is an award winning children's book author with her own web site who, as all authors do, would like you to know her name and buy her books, especially her latest one!

Chapter Two Books was in Trenholm Plaza most of the time I was growing up. It was a fairly small storefront on the Edisto/Holligan's side of the plaza next to the barber shop. In the days when I would get $3.00 for mowing the lawn, I would take the money down there and buy a new Tom Swift, Jr. book. Unlike Browz-A-Bit and Walden's at Dutch Square, science-fiction was not a major category here, and the selection of SF paperbacks (and paperbacks vs hardbacks in general), was pretty small, so aside from Tom Swift, I usually ended up spending my strictly limited funds at one of those stores rather than here, but I do distinctly remember that Chapter Two sold me the last $0.50 paperback I ever saw, a copy of Robert Heinlein's classic Young Adult novel Farmer In the Sky.

Although it was not the intention of any of these shots, if you look out the windows (on the click-through versions especially), you can see a good bit of the old Trenholm Plaza landscape: Tapp's Twig, The Banker's Note, A & P and Standard Federal. By this time the original "steeple" A & P had been torn down and replaced with a more modern design (which was itself torn down for Publix), and the current Books-A-Million location was several storefronts.

I'm not sure exactly when Chapter Two closed. If I didn't have this evidence that it was still there in 1987, I would have guessed then or earlier. In any event, I believe it was gone before Books-A-Million arrived, and I have the vague feeling that the owner decided to retire and close the shop.

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Here's another vacancy in the little strip in the Wal-Mart plaza off of Forest Drive at I-77. It's right down the sidewalk from the (still vacant) Stevie B's PIzza and Check N Go and across the parking lot from the former Shoe Carnival.

Commenter "Nobody" says that as of a few days ago, the storefront had both Closed For Remodeling and non-payment of rent signs posted, presumably by different parties. As of today, it is innocent of any signs, but the interior has been completely cleaned out. I have to admit that I know almost nothing about modern video games, so I don't know if there are systemic factors here as in the video rental market, or if this is just a case of the generally bad economy.

(Hat tip to commenter "Nobody".)

Well, I suppose it was inevitable, but the last Hollywood Video store in Columbia is closing. Previous closings for HV stores are here, here, here, and here.

Looking at their corporate web site and using the store locator, I see that they are also behind the Movie Gallery stores and are closing a number of those in the area as well. They (and Blockbuster) are just trapped in a non-viable business model, and I don't see any way they can come out of it. Even if the economy improves, Netflix, Redbox and online video (both pirated and legal) are going to continue to eat their lunch. Still, you should be able to get some decent bargins there right now.

With this closing, I think the strip containing Hollywood Video, Sparkleberry Square, can be officially described as "troubled".

(Hat tip to commenter Thomas)

I noticed on my Vista stroll a few weeks ago that part of the Mais Oui building on the north side of Gervais was vacant. Apparently the last occupant, Paul D. Sloan Interiors relocated down the hill a little ways. The building is quite nice, and I found this information in a 1983 application to the National Park Service for entry in the National Register of Historic Places:

An interesting, if frustrating, story from The Columbia Star (apparently based on old reports from The Columbia Record) gives the candy store information, and this bit of excitement:

Who knew the candy business was so dangerous?

Shop at the Brown Sign With the Sewing Machine in the Corner!

At one time, South Carolina was a major player in the textile field, and I always assumed that these "factory outlet" stores scattered across the state had some South Carolina "factory" behind them, though it was never spelled out in the long running series of radio ads that always included the tag line about the sign.

I never went into one myself, but they were a feature in various shopping trips made by my female relatives. I can't remember all the locations now, but for sure there were Columbia (actually West Columbia / Triangle City), Salley and Surfside Beach.

The first pictures are of the old Surfside Beach location. This storefront (briefly an alteration shop) is at 1511 Highway 17 North (on the east side of US-17 Business between Inlet Square Mall and SC-544). Since these pictures were taken, they have finally gotten around to taking down the brown sign.

The final picture is of the West Columbia location in Triangle City. Their sign is long gone, and the location now seems to be an eyeglass botique.

I don't know exactly what happened to The Factory Outlets. My presumption is that "the factory" closed during the decline of the domestic textile industry, but that's just a guess. At any rate, while the 12th Street location was in the 1998 phonebook, I don't think it (or they) lasted much later than that.

UPDATE 25 Sep 2010 -- Well, I found the Darlington Factory Outlet (1486 Harry Byrd Highway -- almost across the street from the racetrack), and it looks like you can still get women's fashions there!

(also added the street address for the Surfside Beach location)

UPDATE 10 July 2020: Added some tags. Also adding the map icon for the 12th street location.

Here's another old-school five and dime type operation on Main Street, right next to Silver's.

I'm not sure I ever went into McCrory's. Certainly it was already in decline when I was growing up, and for that type of retail, we were more likely to go to Woolworth's at Richland Mall, Dodd's at Forest Lake or Rose's at Trenholm Plaza.

My memory is that it did survive up to my college years in the early 1980s, and that it then tried to morph into a Family Dollar type operation which did not last long.

This Loopnet listing is interesting in that it has an optimistic artist's rendition of the building converted into

Renovated 31,000 SF of Class A office space for sale or lease. Suites available from 1,500 SF to 30,000 SF.

That is slated for 2011, but I don't think I've ever seen work going on at the site, and it looks rather sad right now with all the plywood.

UPDATE 19 March 2010: Added Revco Drugs to the post title based on the comments (and verified in the 1998 phonebook).

UPDATE 21 September 2012 -- These pictures from 12 January 2012 show work on the site:

This building, at the intersection of Percival Road and Old Percival Road, which loopnet says was built in 1960, has been a variety of things over the years. I used to be aware of it peripherally in the 1970s when I started to drive, and would go out to Bell Camp via Percival Road, and later when I would take Screaming Eagle Road to the beach. The only two tenants I can locate via google are Davis Open Air Market, which I kind of remember, and Percival Quick Stop which I do not.

I'm not really sure when the last business closed here, but I think it's been vacant for several years. The next incarnation, a Latin sports bar, looks nearly ready to open.

UPDATE 28 March 2019: Add tags and map icon.

I believe this Hallmark store in Dutch Square occupied the same space as Browz-A-Bit.

I used to go into Browz-A-Bit all the time, but I can only specifically recall going into Kitty's once. As you may have gathered if you have read a lot of these posting, I'm a big fan of The Beach Boys, and for reasons which probably only make sense to them, they released a CD of live recordings and member solo tracks, Songs From Here and Back exclusively through Hallmark stores a few years back, and I picked up my copy (it's reallly pretty good) at Kitty's.

This story from The State says that sales at the Dutch Square location had declined from a million dollars a year to two hundred and fifty thousand, a decrease of 75%! Given that, I can see how closing the store made sense. Obviously this is bad for the struggling mall though. It's recently lost two national brands with this and Chick-Fil-A closing. On the plus side, it has gotten two new local restaurants, though the re-opening of the D'Avino's space as another pizzeria probably really only counts as restoring the status-quo from a mall point of view.

24 August 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

Box & Bow was what I take to have been a wrapping and shipping store in the Piggly Wiggly plaza (Forest Park, I believe) on Forest Drive just west of Trenholm Plaza. I know my holiday experience vastly improved when I vowed to never wrap another package, but in this economy, perhaps fewer people are doing the same. The closing note is a classy touch during a hard time.

While the plaza and area are fairly upscale, there has been a fair bit of churn there in recent times, with LA Weight Loss, Tiny Treasures, Ten Thousand Villages and a photo-finishing outfit all closing. The plaza Pig itself is a new one and quite nice with noticably more space and better parking than the nearby Publix.

(Hat tip to commeter MPB.)

I'm not really sure this Raco station closed in 2008, but it looks decrepit enough to have been gone longer than a few months, and the listed gas price is too high to have been any earlier than that.

I'm not sure what the deal with "Raco" is. Googling turns up a few other Raco stations, but there doesn't seem to be any Raco company or company web site. There are certainly not common at any rate, and had you asked me "what's that station on Gervais called?" I would have drawn a total blank.

I was a bit surprised walking up and down The Vista Sunday that there are a number of properties for sale. I wonder if when they closed this station down, they figured they would be able to unload the lot quickly and at a good profit..