Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Well, it looks like commenter Mike D was unfortunately correct when he predicted back in January that Fruiti Cup on Harden Street would not be re-opening despite the hopeful Closed Until February 15th sign you can see in the first set of pix.

As of early March, there is a Vacate or Show Cause writ on the door, and it looks like the place has been somewhat cleaned out. That's a shame. I recall that my niece and her daycare class all walked down to Fruiti Cup one summer day, and it was a big deal for them. (Though I myself would prefer a chocolate dip at Zesto..).

This location outlasted the Sparkleberry Square location by about four or five months.

(Hat tip to commenter Mike D)

This Chick-Fil-A on Main Street next to the old Downtowner Motor Inn closed last week after being unable to agree a new lease with the building owner.

With this store closing not too long after the Five Points location opened, the number of downtown Chick-Fil-As is back to one.

The cows are gonna be unhappy..

UPDATE 218 January 2021: Add tags, map icon

It looks like a lateral move for this Lexington storefront, which has now switched from one Mexican restaurant, Mi Casa to another Mi Taco. I don't know if the Mi in both names signifies the same ownership, but it seems plausible. I'm afraid I haven't eaten at either incarnation as I still get over to Lexington very rarely.

UPDATE 23 February 2012: Added Mi Pueblito to the post title based on the comments.

The first time I went to Tandoori Grill I recognized one of the staff from the Broad River Road location of Delhi Palace (or I should say he recognized me), and the food was quite good. I went there probably four or five times and it continued good, then I went there a final time, and I didn't think it was good at all, and I don't think the original guy was there anymore.

I was recently passing by during hours when the place should have been open, and noticed the sign wasn't on, so I turned in to check it out. The sign on the door is a bit unclear, but I think the gist of it is that the restaurant became "available" on 15 January 2012.

The little strip that it sits in, Fortune Square has not seen great success in quite a long while (the main store is Big Lots), but that makes it attractive to smaller operations, a number of which have come and gone over the years, including notably La Pizza Cucina.

UPDATE 18 September 2012 -- It's now Kiki's Chicken and Waffles:

Once upon a time, this building was The Whale's Tail and then Rubino's Italian Restaurant. More recently it has been the second location for Alpine Road's Little Pigs Barbeque -- in fact, after the Alpine Road store caught fire, and before it was repaired, this was the flagship location, though it's hard to imagine a place further away from Alpine Road but still "in the Columbia area".

The building does not seem to be up for sale, and is still furnished, so perhaps the owners have plans to re-open, or open a different restaurant here.

(Hat tip to commenter Nobody).

UPDATE 17 June 2013 -- Cletus' Roadside Grille is now operating in this building (and has been for a while):

Here at the corner of North Main & Sunset Drive is another Columbia area Burger King not serving hamburgers.

However in this case, unlike many cases where a "remodeling" sign is more a fond wish than a hard fact, I think we can expect this store to be back in business before too long as there is actual work underway inside and out.

Heck, even the french fries are being remodeled!

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 8 March 2012 -- Repainting has started:

UPDATE 24 October 2012: I've got some pix somewhere, but I shouldn't wait to find them to say that this Burger King is done remodeling and is open again.

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I leveraged a trip out to Sandhill the other day to go past Clemson Road and into Elgin. This is a little town (the kind where you will find an IGA) just over the county line that we used to drive through all the time down US-1 on our way to Hartsville -- before I-20 came through (ie: It's been a while!). At that time, the points that stuck most in my mind were the ramshackle looking pottery outlet (still there..), the Elgin Watch factory (the reason the town is not now called Blaney) and the Blaney Drag Strip.

I would still drive through from time-to-time when I lived in Fayetteville, and the double-nickel was still in force making the non-Interstate time penalty less than it is now. On one memorable late night drive, I found an overtuned car and had to ride off to summon help.

All of which is neither here nor there except to the point that I haven't gone through there much in the daytime since the 60s, and I was a bit surprised to find that I-20 has put it almost in the metro area. In particular, I saw a branch of a Columbia Mexican chain San Jose on White Pond Road heading to I-20, and I wonder if that had anything to do with the demise of La Costena on Main Street.

Commenter Miz T says:

They closed down a couple of months ago, which is quite sad. We frequented the place quite often and the workers knew my youngest daughter ever since she was a baby and called her by name. They had a mural of the history of Elgin painted on the side of the building. It is now a fruit and veggie stand.

You can see the produce stand in these pictures, though it is not clear to me if it is using the whole building or just the porch.

(Hat tip to commenter Miz T)

Driving down Sunset to North Main the other day, I noticed that King's Chef Chinese Restaurant is closed -- closed and fenced off, to be exact. I'm not entirely sure when this happened, but I drove by a number of times in December and didn't notice anything wrong, so I'm guessing January.

Just from looking at the building, it was evident that it had been a chain fast-food place of some sort before King's Chef moved in, and a glance at my 1997 phonebook confirms that the original tenant was McDonald's. I don't recall when that closed (and don't have the directories at home to research it), but I think King's Chef has been there a good while, so I would guess early 2000s.

King's Chef is not the only re-purposed fast food in the area. Almost directly across the street is a Long John Silver's which has been turned into a TitleMax. (And of course, the Family Dollar next to King's Chef is a re-purposed Eckerd Drugs.)

UPDATE 6 February 2012: Commenter Thomas notes that there was a fire here and that they are rehabilitating the building, so I have appended "temporary" to the post title.

UPDATE 18 September 2012 -- It's open again (and has been for a while):

Well, this is an interesting closing, more for the implications than anything else. Starbucks is not in the business of closing stores that make money, and this is a foot-traffic location, so I would say that this section of Sandhill, at least, does not get as much foot traffic as expected, and that, in addition, they decided it wasn't worth it to move to one of the empty spots on the main drag either.

As for the store itself, I think I stopped there once or twice, and it was fine: A typical Starbucks with no apparent problems.

UPDATE 15 February 2012: Added a night-time picture.

(Hat tip to commenter Elizabeth)

UPDATE 10 April 2013 -- It's now a cupcake bakery:

UPDATE 30 November 2021: Adjusting street address, updating tags, adding map icon.