Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

For Sale By Bank the sign reads at this colorful strip mall on Knox Abbott Drive.

It appears that Sandy's Famous Hot Dogs is pretty much the only business left here, and I'm sure they will probably continue under the new owners when and if.

I'm not exactly sure why this place didn't prosper. I find it rather attractive, with all the bright colors, and it's not particularly hard to get to, or to get in and out of.

I don't believe the Taco Bell building on the west side of the plaza is officially part of it, but its re-incarnation seems to have gone wrong, leaving it empty as well.

UPDATE 27 August 2011: The plaza has been sold and Sandy's is gone.

UPDATE 5 April 2012 -- The Chinese immersion charter school is up and running:

I've written about this building before in the closing for Black Bull Restaurant. Hard Knox Grill was the immediate follow-on operation in that building, and was, I believe a rock-and-roll nightclub as well as a restaurant. I say "I believe" because it's another of the many places in and around town that I had a vague intention to get to sometime, but never did until it was too late.

At any rate, looking at the posted operating hours, it's probably just as well I never drove over there for lunch. That sign also appears to tell a story in that apparently at some point full-week operations were cut back to weekend-only mode.

The stack of Free Times newspapers sitting by the door is the "October 13-19 2010" issue. Those would have been dropped off on the morning of Wednesday 13 October. Since they were never taken inside to the rack in the foyer, but there is no pile from the previous week, I think it's safe to say the place operated Friday & Saturday 8 & 9 October, but not since.

(Hat tip to commenter "Nobody")

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1108 Knox Abbott Drive does not seem to exist anymore. I believe that this SCB&T at the corner of Knox Abbott and 11th Street is the successor location, but I could be a bit off on exactly where the demolished Putt-Putt center was.

The last listing for Putt-Putt Golf & Games was in the Feb 1985 phonebook, so apparently they closed down sometime in 1985, just about the time I was leaving town for my 20 or so years of sojourning elsewhere. I can vaguely recall seeing the place, but I never got around to visiting it -- In my mind, minature golf was something you did at Bell Camp or the beach, and I had enough, or more than enough, video games closer to the University or closer to home to keep me busy.

Putt-Putt had a number of locations in Columbia for years, including Percival Road, Devine Street and Saint Andews Road. Those all closed and then, some years later, one on Sparkleberry opened, but didn't last long at all.

UPDATE 7 Nov 2010 -- OK, there seems to be a general consensus that the picture above is the wrong location for the former Putt-Putt. Some say it was about where Kenny's is:

Others say as far up as Preciscion Tune:

Apparently this building, on the South side of Knox Abbott Drive, just below the Crazy Buffett, has a history in financial services.

As is often the case in vacant buildings with custom signs, the existing sign is turned around in the display. I guess this is done to keep the elements out of the display box, at any rate I've seen these reversed signs many times since I started this blog. Anyway, this sign indicates that financial services company Amerifirst Direct once operated here. That would have been before 2008 when Citifancinal is listed in the phonebook for that slot.

Citifinancial either closed or moved during 2008 as it is gone from the 2009 phonebook (There is still a Citi office on Knox Abbott, but I don't know if it is the same operation or a separate one).

UPDATE 28 June 2016 -- Now a State Farm office:

This Dollar Discount store in Parkland Plaza has been "for sale" for a good while, in fact I almost did a post on it before, but they seemed to be in full operation while looking for a buyer, so never did. Driving by tonight, I saw from the banner that they are explicitly closing now. I've never been in this store, but apparently Dollar Discount is a franchaise concept with 140 stores over all and three other stores in South Carolina (Pageland, Effingham and Sumter). I've always liked this kind of store as it gives you a feeling of power to walk in with $5.00 in your pocket and walk out with actual stuff. It seems I can always find something or other that I need or want, and I'll bet the prices are even better right now. This particular store appears to also run a shipping operation called The Mail Room, possibly taking up the slack when the contract post office in Parkland Pharmacy closed.

Once when my cousin noticed an old sign for the company her father used to work for still up on an old barn out in the country, she went to see the owner to try and buy it for her father's birthday. I was with her, and the old gentleman owning the place was a talkative fellow with lots of interesting stories (he claimed that Jimmy Doolittle wanted his help in setting up the Army Air Corps during WWII, but the letter got lost coming from Washington DC to rural SC..). When we asked what the population of the little community was, he said something like "One hundred ninety, same as when I was born. We always figured it stayed the same since every time a baby was born, a man had to leave town". Something of the sort seems to be holding for Parkland Plaza since Ace Hardware is re-opening, just as this store is closing..

UPDATE 29 Oct 2010 -- well the store is definitely gone now:

though it is still listed on the Parkland Plaza marquee:

UPDATE 10 January 2012 -- As mentioned by commenter Andrew, this is now a Radio Shack:

UPDATE 4 March 2013 -- Finally got around to taking a picture of the new (well, not so new at this point!) location of The Mail Room in Granby Villiage on the Charleston Highway:

"Your Host From Coast-to-Coast"

I went looking for this building on Knox Abbott last year, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing at that address now. The postcard certainly makes what appears to be a rather nondescript building look impressive by adding a sharp car and elegant model, even if there is perhaps a touch too much of "the old South" in the pose chosen.

My experience with Holiday Inns over the years has been mixed. I currently seek out the Holiday Inn Express sites, which seem to be uniformly good. The "regular" HIs can be a mixed bag. The one I used to go to quite often in DC invariably had the freeze/bake thermostat system, and at least once seemed to have gotten the cold and hot water pipes running to my room backwards (though luckily, hot was at best "tepid" in that case).

Here's another old-style Taco Bell that has moved to a new location (739 Knox Abbott Drive in this case) with drive-through capabilities and the new-style chain architecture. There is still an old-style one on Decker Boulevard (though I believe it already has a drive-through) but the ones on Devine Street and Broad River Road are gone and/or moved.

This is really too many pictures, but I like these buildings, and I like clouds. The last picture is of their new location, which is several blocks towards the river.

UPDATE 24 Sep 2010 -- As noted by commenter Jamie, the building has been re-painted, and there has been some work to convert it to a Wata Wing, but that seems to have stalled:

This Food Lion in Airport Square at the intersection of Airport Boulevard and The Charleston Highway, was open as recently as 3 March 2009 when they posted a want ad for a sales manager.

I posted a number of closings in this general area lately, though not all of them actually happened lately. On the whole I think its fair to say the business climate is not good there. I'm not super familiar with the local stores, but I'm drawing a blank on a grocery store closer to here than the Bi-Lo in Parkland Plaza, which is a fair drive down Knox Abbott. I guess there's the Wal-Mart and Bi-Lo on US-1, but that's about the same distance.

UPDATE 4 Feb 2011 -- It's now a "Save A Lot" grocery store. I went in the one in Aiken once and didn't see any brands I had heard of..

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

UPDATE 7 Feb 2011: Updated the post title with a more precise closing date based on the comments.

UPDATE 13 January 2021: Update tags, add map icon.

I don't know when this Burger King went under, but it may have never come back from that time in the 90s when the local franchisee (who owned all the Columbia BKs) got in a dispute with corporate and all Columbia Burger Kings closed. Eventually new ownership was found and a number of them came back (with special commercials featuring "Blues Doctor" Drink Small..), but several never did.

I'm not sure when the follow-on business: TitleMax/CheckMax closed, but I believe it was this year.

I find it rather interesting that the street number displayed on the building is clearly 1402, but google is adamant that the real number is 1400.

I first wrote about this former steakhouse when Crazy Buffett folded, but it now appears that the second Chinese buffet operation in the building is history as well. I'm not sure why -- it seems like a decent location with good visibility and plenty of traffic passing by and I can't think of any other Chinese buffets in the area. There's the second Eggroll Station on Sunset, but that's not a buffet.

Notice how the left side of the building still proclaims it to be a "restaurante", a bit of signage remaining from the Mexican incarnation of the place..

UPDATE 16 May 2013 -- As mentioned by commenter Andrew, this place is being knocked down: