Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I don't really know anything about Gamecock Country, but I was at a karate graduation in this building recently, and thought it must have originally been something else. A bit of googling shows that the building has apparently changed hands twice in the last two years. Google also suggests that Gamecock Country was a sporting goods store.

UPDATE 6 Sep 2009: Added Smith's Hardware to post title based on the comments.

Well, this wasn't what I was expecting to find when I took a look at the old Aquarium & Pet Shop, Incorporated site. This place is on a little side street of Bush River Road, just past Fuddruckers by the Radison and the Bush River Road, I-20 Southbound interchange. I would see it out of the corner of my eye for years as I would get on the highway there, but since I don't have any pets, I didn't really pay any attention.

I did notice when the sign came down though. I would say that was probably around 2005 or so, and I kind of wondered what would go into that spot.

When I was eating at Fuddruckers last Saturday, I decided to walk up and look at the place, expecting to find an empty building. Instead, the place appears to be jam-packed with stuff, and is plainly still under at least semi-regular care by people running the pet store. In fact, given all the paraphernalia I could see from the parking lot, I wondered for a minute if I were wrong about the place being closed, but walking up to the door cleared that up. I'm not sure what the story here is, though I hope it is not a sad one.

I've posted pictures before of the older style, steeple-topped A&P stores. This one, on a Dutch Square outparcel was one in the "new" style A&P adopted before leaving the South Carolina market. (I'm not counting the "supercenter" type stores such as in North Myrtle Beach).

I don't believe I ever went into this store. I certainly spent plenty of time at Dutch Square as I've mentioned in a number of posts, but during most of that period I was a tween or teen, fixated on books and music, and hardly shopping for groceries at all (not to mention that Dutch Square was on the other side of town from our usual grocery destinations). I'm guessing the 1990s as the (vague) closing date for this store, but it could as easily have been the 1980s.

I think that after this store closed, the area was actually pretty grocery-less, with no stores I can think of in the same general vicinity. (Food Lion had a Bush River Road store, but it closed too).

UPDATE 12 March 2011: Updated closing date based on commenter Andrew's research.

Apparently Tiny Treasures was once in Richland Mall, then moved to the Piggly Wiggly plaza ("Forest Park Shopping Center") a few years ago. I have never been in there since it seems to be a children's clothes store, and I don't have any kids. That area of the plaza has been fairly volitile over the last few years, also losing Ten Thousand Villages and L. A. Weight Loss.

Here's another casualty of the decline of O'Neil Court. There's a lamp and lighting store by this, and that's a business where if you need an unusual shade or globe, you'll go loking for a store. For auto parts, it's pretty much the stores you notice when you drive by. That's my theory anyway for why this NAPA store has moved into a new building on Two Notch just under the Food Lion plaza near Pine Belt Road.

I believe the only Stein Mart I've ever been in is the Inlet Square store in Murrells Inlet where a desperate mall offered them the main west-side entrance corridor as store space. I can't recall much other than it was a clothes store that probably wouldn't be on my list when I make a reluctant clothes shopping expedition.

This store is at the corner of Two Notch & Polo Roads, and had pretty much totally escaped my notice until now. Polo Road has certainly developed massively since I was in high school, and there was, in fact, a polo field out there (which one of my classmates managed to set on fire with a model rocket), and development on Two Notch has definitely moved away from Dentsville and into this area, but with the current economy there are still plenty of vacant storefronts in the area, and soon there will be one more.

UPDATE 18 May 2010 -- It's now Roundabouts Consignments:

UPDATE 17 August 2020: Update tags, add map icon.

This is another casualty of the Ritz Camera chain's downsizing. Previously I wrote about the store on Two Notch Road which closed earlier this summer, and was hoping the other stores were safe. Unfortunately the trend seems to be continuing with this, the Harbison area store, closing while I was on vacation in July.

My observations of the Beltline store makes it seem to me that Ritz has almost totally ditched film photography for digital. I found that the last time I was in there and needed a roll of 35mm, they had a smaller selection than either Wal-Mart or Walgreen's. I'm sure this is a deliberate stragegy, and obviously digital is where the market is and where it will be. On the other hand, when you go to an actual "camera" store, you expect some more obscure items than you can find at the corner drugstore, so I'm not sure the strategy isn't a mixed blessing during this final film/digital period of transition.

UPDATE 30 August 2017 -- Still vacant 8 years later:

Commenter Melanie found these matchbook images from a place I have no memory of. 4610 Devine Street does not currently exist. Ruby Tuesday is at 4600 Devine Street, and Checkmax Payday Advance is at 4624 Devine Street. I know they have done a lot of work in the past on the streets in this area. I believe 4610 must have been torn down to make the entrance street into the new-ish plaza which houses Ruby Tuesday, Staples and Bi-Lo (I know the Pizza Hut in that area was torn down). In fact, if that street had been there originally, you would expect Ruby Tuesday and Checkmax to have different block numbers. (As an aside, I'm a little surprised to find that these are all Devine addresses -- I had thought that Garners Ferry started here, but in fact it's apparently at Rosewood).

Anyway, it's obvious from the matchbook that this place was one of the adult book stores which have been in various parts of Columbia since the late 60s, I suppose. In fact, Fort Jackson Boulevard which runs into Devine in this area used to have a number of racy operations.

Hat Tip: Melanie

Does Kmart even have a business stragegy anymore? Fabian tactics work if your opponnent needs to keep sending home for men, money and elephants, none of which is the case for Wal Mart, whose new store on the site of the old Bush RIver Mall doomed this Kmart location. If your strategy is "close a store whenever Wal Mart opens one", you might as well just turn the lights off now. I remember the bluelight.com strategy during the dot-com bubble, and the Martha Stewart strategy before she went to jail, but what is it now?

Hardee's decided to not go head-on with or try to out-McDonald McDonald's with their "Thickburger" campaign, and seem to have gotten some traction with it. Target seems to have found a viable "almost as cheap as Wal Mart, but nicer" strategy, why can't Kmart? You would think that after all the effort and money they spent buying Sears they could leverage that brand somehow, or they could always rebrand their stores with the historic and fondly remembered S. S. Kresge nameplate and try to refocus that way.

I've never run so much as a hot-dog cart, so I can't pretend to know the answer, if indeed there is one, but keeping old looking, poorly stocked stores like this one open without any refits until Wal Mart moves in isn't it!

I suppose it wouldn't bother me except I have a certain residual fondness for Kmart since we shopped a good bit there while I was growing up. Mostly it was the Two Notch or Fort Jackson stores, but if we were on the right side of town, it could be this one as well. Kmart is the only store I've ever been lost in, the store I brought my first LP in (The Beach Boys 2-disc "Endless Summer" for $5.25) and the first place I would go when shopping on my own if I ever needed a hammer or a light bulb or anything like that. I even remember the old-style "Blue Light Specials" where they would literally drag a flashing blue light cart to the shelves with the special promotion items.

Oh well, or as the clerks used to be remided with a sticker on the register: TYFSAK.

UPDATE 19 Aug 2009 -- Well, I guess they do have a stragegy:

or perhaps it's just a hope, "Savings Are Here to Stay". And I'm pretty sure that's not how to spell Arrowwood.

UPDATE 14 Septmber 2009: Added an older, but better hilltop picture above.

UPDATE 9 November 2009:

Well the store finally closed yesterday evening. As it happened, I was in the area having had lunch at Fuddruckers, so I stopped by. The store was basically operating out of a small square area in front that was formed with walls of shelving moved to semi-enclose the space. They weren't actually keeping people out of the back part of the store, just indicating that there was nothing to buy back there, so I walked around behind the area to get some pictures of the vast empty spaces.

As the final half hour of the store's life started, the announcer came on and said that everything was now 95% off. I hadn't really planned to buy anything, and indeed there wasn't much left to buy, but anytime there's a 95% off sale, some sort of "There must be something I can use" reflex kicks in, and I started actually looking on the shelves.

In the event, I found some of those electrical sockets that you screw into edison-base light fixtures to make them into electrical outlets -- something I need every ten years or so, and got a number of those. I also picked up some of those "make one phone jack into two phone jacks" plugs, a Rand McNally map, and some sort of Disney Hannah Montanna memory card that claims to have songs on it though I'm not even sure I have a reader for that format.

As I was checking out, the announcer was saying, "and if you know anyone who's hiring, let your cashier know", which was sad, but I suppose very appropos.

After I left, I went over to Dutch Square for a little while then came to the parking lot to take an exterior picture of the storefront and roadside sign. Then it occurred to me to drive up to the Dutch Square parking lot again, and take a few shots from the hill over Hardee's.

The blue-light is now dark.

UPDATE 22 August 2012 -- As mentioned by commenter Andrew, something is going on at this old Kmart. The front doors have been boarded up, but with a new access, and there are construction dumpsters out front. I don't know if the Remington College poster on the building indicates that they will be expanding from across the parking lot into this building or if they just leased the right to hang a billboard for their operation (in the OfficeMax) there. At any rate, there is no visible construction permit to give any better idea of what is happening:

UPDATE 1 October 2012 -- Construction is going on:

UPDATE 7 October 2019: Add map icon, update tags.

I noticed this empty car lot a week or so ago as I was driving down North Main towards Sunset. It's really a pretty good sized property, and looks to have shut down fairly recently, as the soft drink machine is still there, but that's just a guess. I really like all the flags and banners that car lots have. Unfortunately this was an overcast day, so they don't look that great here.

You've got to love the (possibly misplaced in this case) optimism of car lots too:

Right Cars! Right Price! Right Now!