Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here's another closed Eckerd store, although google indicates that this one was open as recently as the Rite Aid transition, which is not how I recall it. This store sits at the intersection of Two Notch and Beltline, and is now a children's dental clinic.

I'm pretty sure this location also once housed the local AMC dealership, name now forgotten, where I bought a really awful, I mean world class bad, car, though all those structures have since been torn down (or if they were like the car, may have just fallen apart..)

UPDATE 25 January 2012 -- Interestingly, the building directly across the street (in the old Payless Shoes/Carzzz location) is also becoming a dental clinic.

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add tags, map icon, change "Eckerd" to "Eckerd Drugs" & "Rite Aid Drugs" to "Rite Aid" in post title.

UPDATE 17 November 2022: Changed title from "Eckerd Drugs / Rite Aid" to "Rite Aid / Eckerd Drugs" based on the comments.

By all rights, I ought to remember Ravenwood Pharmacy. It was in the 1970 phonebook, so I would have been nine at the time, and I recall a lot of stuff from 1970. It was also near to Trenholm Park where we went from time to time and shared a parking lot with the Covenant Road Piggly Wiggly where my mother sometimes (though admittedly not often) shopped. Add to that the fact that presumably it lasted several years beyond 1970, and I'm a bit mystified by why I can't recall it at all. I suppose the fact that we filled almost all our prescriptions at Campbell's Drugs must explain it.

This real estate listing says the building was built in 1960, and I assume the Pharmacy was the first tenant. The second tenant was Forest Lake TV in its second location. I can't recall any tenants after that (though I would have been living out of town at the time) -- certainly the building has been empty for at least five years now.

UPDATE 31 July 2010 -- Looks like it's to be a thrift store now:

UPDATE 11 September 2010 -- Apparently that's not going to happen:

UPDATE 20 June 2016 -- Something looks to be happening here again:

UPDATE 25 April 2018 -- Well, the 2016 attempt didn't happen, but now there is more work going on:

UPDATE 14 June 2018 -- Hmm, very blue. Maybe a Pelican snocone place?

UPDATE 30 October 2018 -- Now open as DCP Convenience:

I've written before about Capitol News Stand on Main Street and Capitol News Stand on Saint Andrews Road, but this branch was on the other side of town behind the Two Notch Road K-Mart on O'Neil Court.

My memory is that the building (which now houses a fitness center) was somewhat smaller than the Main Street space. It definitely had fewer paperbacks and foreign magazines. I believe that it was the last branch that Capitol established, and I would say it started sometime in the 80s and I had the feeling that it never really established itself. The location can't have helped -- everything that goes into O'Neil Court fails, and it was somwhat lacking in a raison-d'etre. Downtown had the best selection, so if you really wanted a news-stand type thing, that's where you would look, and Waldenbooks in Columbia Mall was just a few blocks away, so if you wanted a book, that's probably where you would look first. It did have the advantage of convienience over Walden's -- you could park close by and dash in if you just wanted a newspaper where as Walden's had no outside entrance.

I forget exactly when the place closed. It certainly pre-deceased the Main Street location by a good number of years, but I think it outlasted the Hampton Street and Saint Andrews Road Locations.

I can't quite recall which storefront in the now largely defunct Capitol Centre plaza behind Columbia Mall housed Aliens & Alibis, but it was one of the ones pictured here.

Aliens & Alibis was the right store at the wrong time. It was a book store which as the name suggested, concentrated on science fiction and mysteries, something I would have been all over in the 70s or 80s. In the event, I think I went there twice. They had some nicely offbeat SF and mystery books -- things like art books of classic pulp covers and small press editions of classic authors -- stuff that wouldn't show up at Waldenbooks.

Unfortunately, they started not in the 70s or 80s, but in the 00s, and the market had completely changed. First, Waldenbooks and The Happy Bookseller were no longer the main in-town competition. Both of those stores were relatively small spaces and simply couldn't stock obscure genre books in depth. That wasn't true, though, for big-box booksellers like Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million. Second, there was The Internet and the Amazon.com juggernaut. Now virtually any obscure small-press reprint or obscure new book by your favorite (though bottom list) author was available with a mouse click and suddenly the only thing a store like Aliens & Alibis had going for it was the serendipity factor -- going in and seeing something you didn't know existed, and that just wasn't enough, especially in the face of Amazon's improving "you might like this" technology, and internet discussion groups. I saw the same thing happen to Atlanta's Science Fiction and Mystery shop several years earlier, and was actually a bit surprised to see a Columbia operation try the same thing.

I believe that after the shop left Capitol Centre, it went to Garners Ferry and then became a web operation which is probably the only way to do it now, and good luck to them.

A To Z Video was on Two Notch Road next to Dave's nightclub and almost across the street from the Aaro Rental Center. Although I never went in, I was under the impression at the time that the salient fact in the name was that 'X' was between 'A' & 'Z' -- however, looking at these pictures I notice "videogames" so perhaps I was wrong about that.

At any rate, the place did not last long, and sat empty for quite a while. I figured I ought to go ahead and take these pictures despite it being so drab and rainy as it appears that the building is about to go under construction and I expect to see something new here before too long.

UPDATE 12 September 2011 -- The building has been refurbished somewhat and is now up for lease, though the A To Z signage so far remains:

Browz-A-Bit was the "second" book store in the old Dutch Square, with Waldenbooks definitely being the "first". I'm a little hazy on the exact location of the store, but it was on the Bush River Road side of the mall, and I think was a bit up the "hill" from Woolworth's.

In the early 70s my mother would often drop me off at the mall while she and my sister went off to do something different. I guess I would have been around 12 or 13, old enough to have stayed home alone, but I always liked the Dutch Square experience. At the time, I had a weekly allowance of $0.60, and could earn $3.00 mowing the lawn, so I would have a few dollars in my pocket to hit the bookstores.

Sometimes I would walk down to the old Book Dispensary location in Boardwalk Plaza on Bush River Road, but mostly I would hit Waldenbooks and Browz-A-Bit. While Walden's had the "legitimate" book trade cornered, with hardbacks (which I would never be able to afford), some depth in stock and the current New York Times bestsellers, Browz-A-Bit tended more towards "men's adventure" (Doc Savage, The Destroyer, Nick Carter etc), TV tie-ins, the sensational (they seemed to be big on "Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Phrophet!") and the non-book: Hallmark cards, little gifts, the Weekly World News etc..

While I can still remember very well some of the exact books I bought at Walden's during those days, I can't do that for Browz-A-Bit. I feel sure I would have gotten some Doc Savage books there (and if you only saw the cheesy 70s movie, you should seek out the original pulp adventures, the best of which are cracking good yarns).

If I recall correctly, the store was set up with two rows of wire books racks on the left side of the shop with the greeting cards and knick-knacks on the right side of the store and tabloids by the cash register, which was in the middle-front of the store.

I'm not really sure when or why Browz-A-Bit closed, but I think it was in the 80s, well before the big box bookstores came to Harbison (or indeed to Columbia at all). Maybe it would have helped to have called it Buy-A-Bit instead..

Zesto's is a Columbia area chain of almost-open-air walk-up restaurants. The older ones are generally odd in that while there may be a dining room, it does not connect to the order counter (which may or may not even be "inside"). The chain is greek influenced, and probably does most of their business in chicken, but for me the attraction has always been chocolate-dipped soft-serve vanilla cones. There's almost a little ceremony as the server fills the cone, then upends it and dips it into the vat of molten chocolate. Then, you take it, wrapped in a little napkin which soaks up the vanilla which is already running down the cone to your hand and, and bite into the just hardened shell -- perfection.

This lot on the corner of Harden & Blossom streets was for many years home to the Five Points Zesto. I believe the store was actually built as a Zesto and had a large ice-cream cone "statue" similar to the Triangle City store in Cayce. Although I typically went to the Forest Drive store across from Richland Mall for my chocolate-dip fix, I recall being quite sad when the Five Points store was demolished. What was even sadder is that the location would probably still be viable as a Zesto's, but the store which replaced it, a Record Bar offshoot called Tracks failed pretty quickly. Here's what commenter Hal had to say about Tracks:

I also worked at the Columbia Mall Record Bar. I worked from November of 85 untill the store closed in 91. Brian is correct in that there where two Record Bars in Columbia at the time. One at Dutch Square, which was store #9, and the one at Columbia Mall, which was store #94. The Tracks in 5 points open around 89 or 90, and was the mack-daddy of it’s day. It was the first two story store, which they later regreted because it had no handicap access to the second story, and it was a video rental store. It also got national news coverage when a drunk plowed his car straight trough the Blossom street wall. Hillarious.

At any rate, Tracks didn't last there too long. I forget if there was anything else before the current tenant, T-Mobile, which has been there at least five or more years.

The traffic cones, and the general drab & gray aspect of the picture are due to it being taken the day before the Five Points St. Patrick's Day fest -- what great weather they had this year!

UPDATE 4 June 2024: Update tags, add map icon, correct post title from Zesto's to Zesto.

This building, on Pinestraw Road just below Satchelford Road, was a convenience store in the 1970s. I can't now recall if it were a "national" brand or a one-off, but I don't think it lasted very long. I'm not sure why -- the area is mainly residential, and I would have expected a good bit of foot traffic, especially since kids were still allowed to roam a little at the time.

At any rate, after the store closed, the (somewhat remodeled) building was still apparently in use, but never for anything "public". I think I saw service type trucks pulling in and out a few times, but it was always a bit mysterious. I guess that has ended, as the building is now up for lease.

UPDATE 22 September 2016: add Young's to the post title and update the closing date from 1970s to early 1980s based on the comments.

Lionel Playworld was, I believe, the first anchor tenant for the ill-fated strip-mall at the corner of Decker and Trenholm Extension (though I am not sure the extension was finished at the time it opened). The place keeps coming up in the comments to the Columbia Mall Toys-R-Us post, so I thought I would give it its own post.

My understanding is that the chain was owned by the same company that made the iconic 3-rail 0-27 guage model trains, and was a "big box" toy store, one of the first in the Columbia market. The place operated fairly quietly until the end when it earned a lot of bad will from the shopping public. I believe the way it unfolded was that the decision to close the store was made in the fall, but not announced. They operated through Christmas Eve, and then closed without warning, leaving anyone with a Christmas gift to return or exchange high and dry -- it got quite a bit of local media attention at the time.

After Lionel the strip went into heavy decline, and the building sat empty for a number of years until Winn-Dixie opened there (in the left part of the building) with great fanfare. After Winn-Dixie pulled out of South Carolina, the building sat idle for several years again, until The Comedy House relocated there from the Saint Andrews Road area (after a gap). From the signage, a bingo operation also now uses the location.

Continuing my recent theme of defunct Eckerd stores, this one on Broad River Road at the intersection with Saint Andrews Road (and across from the old Steve's #1 Sub Contractor sub shop) was, if I recall correctly, one of the newer stores. It has the "modern" corner-lot siting with a drive-through. It sits, in fact, catty-cornered across the street from a new-ish CVS of the same vintage, proving the site is viable for drugstores -- I suspect that if Eckerd's in general hadn't had problems and had held on to this store a few years more, Rite Aid could have done a viable business there.

UPDATE 8 March 2011 -- It's now a Dollar Tree:

UPDATE 10 August 2020: Add map icon, update tags.