Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Here is another closed NAPA store.

While I certainly hope that the employees are able to continue on at 3720 Two Notch Road, calling it a move is not quite right as that store has existed for several years, and was apparently built to replace the O'Neil Court location.

Interestingly, the phonebook (Feb 2012) gives the address for the Hardscrabble store as "1507 Hardscrabble Road", which led me on a merry chase all the way from Wilson, and when 1507 was in the boonies and obviously wrong, across both Farrow and Clemson. I probably wouldn't do *that* again, at least not close to rush hour. In fact this store turns out to be just a few buildings down from the old Santorini Grill and a few up from the former Food Lion and Blockbuster.

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This Calhoun Street building has much more character than modern boxy auto parts stores and I especially like the style of the logo as well. The interior has an old fashioned look too, though I like that less well than the exterior. Judging from the door note, Burns was a family business, and 50 years is a nice long run and well deserved retirement.

(Hat tip to commenter GA Lemons)

Compared to your usual auto parts store, this warehouse space on Laurel Street is huge (the property listing says 20,000 square feet). It's also kind of out of the way. I don't know if the business model was that this is where garages got their parts (vs retail customers) or if they had their own machine shop in the warehouse space. Or perhaps Bumper to Bumper and All Pro split the space. At any rate, it's all available now.

As I was looking for The Sunbeam Thrift Store the other week, I noticed that this storefront on the West side of Parklane just north of Columbia Mall was also vacant. The sign indicates that they have relocated to 1315 Calhoun Street, which looks to be about at the intersection with Sumter.

This place is not too far from the NAPA on O'Neil Court which also relocated, though there are still a number of parts stores in the general area.

UPDATE 7 May 2012: The Calhoun Street location has now closed as well.

I'm not sure when this NAPA Auto Parts on Garners Ferry Road, just across the street from Aldi closed. However, it's in this year's phonebook (which would have come out around Feb 2010), so it can't have been too long ago.

The photos are shot against the sun and so aren't too good, but you can see it's quite a sizeable building. It seems to have been a machine shop as well as a parts store, and so similar in size to the one on Millwood.

UPDATE 19 December 2012 -- It's now Kids Club USA:

Man, this is a cavernous space! My eyes tend to glide over buildings that I'm not interested in, and most of the time auto parts stores fall into that category, but it's hard to believe how many times I must have driven past that behemoth without noticing it. Apparently this place was a machine shop as well as a parts store, so I guess that explains the larger footprint. Perhaps it explains why the place closed as well. I admit I have very little idea of what exactly a machine shop does, but if it involves auto repair, wouldn't most people use parts from the factory rather than having them machined locally?

According to a really cool real estate listing that you should look at, if just for the ariel view, the place has 9600 square feet in the main space and 2690 square feet in the mezzanine. Notice the curtains hung in the mezzanine window too!

Hat tip to ChiefDanGeorge..

UPDATE 28 Sep 2010 -- It's now a church:

I was going to Panera Bread the other day, and noticed that this Advance Auto Parts store in an outparcel of the Garners Ferry Road K-Mart was gone. Actually, the day I noticed it, one of those fly-by-night sofa sales operations had set up shop in the parking lot (which is well located for access and visibility). The door sign optimistically states "closed temporarily", but we shall see. Interestingly (or not :-) this place is just catty-cornered across the street from the NAPA Auto Parts store I wrote about a while back.

And as a special added bonus, the historical marker for "Camp Jackson", which is in the store parking lot:

UPDATE 18 March 2009:

Well, looks like I took those pictures just in time. I went by on 12 March, and they had already knocked the whole place down (except for the front steps) and were digging a honking big hole where it was. So far the historic plaque is untouched.

UPDATE 17 Dec 2010: Fixed the post title to indicate "Devine Street" rather than "Garners Ferry Road". Added a second picture of the new store.

UPDATE 5 October 2009: The new store is built and open:

UPDATE 17 Dec 2010: Changed post title to indicate Devine Street rather than Garners Ferry Road. Added another picture of the new store.

UPDATE 4 April 2022: Updating tags, adding map icon.