Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

For many years these stallions pranced in front of B&N Garage & Body Shop on the industrial end of Satchelford Road. I took those pictures back in 2010. Sadly I believe the owner of the shop has now passed on, and the horses have moved to greener pastures. Currently the property is for sale.

I have been meaning to get these pictures up for a while since work at the Hotel Trundle storefront ended up exposing the old marquee for a while.

When I was growing up, the Western Auto at Trenholm Plaza more or less where the Lululemon is now was my goto place for hobby batteries. In particular they had gigantic 1.5 volt carbon-zinc cells with screw tip connectors. I forget whatall I did, but electro-magnets, oddball things with flashlight bulbs and glowplugs figured into it. The stores were ubiquitous for a good while then the whole chain went into decline. I kind of remember that the last one open locally was in the Two Notch Kmart building.

I don't actually remember this location at all from back in the day. Of course we would not have driven downtown given that Trenholm Plaza was much more convenient, but I would have thought I would have some memory of seeing it, which I don't.

According to Wikipedia Western Auto was bought by Sears, which worked out as you would expect, and Sears sold most of it to Advance Auto Parts with the chain basically going defunct by 2003.

As reported by commenter Gypsie, Brakes 4 Less has moved down (or up) the street to 603-B Columbia Avenue which was apparently a Precision Tune.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

I noticed the other day that the carwash at the corner of Percival & Brackenridge is gone, and all the bays on the building are now enclosed in rollup doors. There doesn't seem to be any name on the place now, but perhaps a new auto-related operation is coming.

I noticed this vacant car rental storefront on a recent visit to St Andrews Square on Saint Andrews Road. I'm not sure when they closed or moved, but they are still on the roadside sign. (On the othe rhand, so is the Newsstand, which has been gone at least 20 years!)

This Advance Auto Parts was almost at the corner of Two Notch and Beltline -- in fact its parking lot connects with Murphy Express which *is* at the corner, and I have found it is usually a better way to get in and out of Murphy's than their actual entrances.

I believe I was only actually in this store once, probably about a year ago when I needed some jumper cables. I considered what they had to be very over-priced, but not enough so that I wanted to drive down to Wal-Mart, so I went ahead and bought them (they worked fine).

I'm not sure exactly when they closed, but it's quite recent, and I believe this month. Of corse a number of other Advance Auto Parts outlets remain in the area.

I noticed this place was boarded-up as I drove past, so I turned around and took a closer look. As far as I can tell from the Google reviews, Entity Motors closed up in the time frame of "a year ago", having received mixed reviews.

The place is a solid looking older style house that would be attractive with a bit of TLC, so perhaps some sort of professional office will move in eventually. The LoopNet information is here.

The last google reviews for this place say "9 months ago", so I'm just going with 2024 for a closing date here.

I believe this building was once a maid service headquarters, though I did not do a closing on that. I know that at one time it was an Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which did feature here.

Despite the eye-catching bright yellow trim, I don't ever recall actually noticing this place while it was in operation though it looks to have been there at least since October of 2018.

Here is the LoopNet summary of the property, and here is the actual real-estate listing: The place can be yours for $700,000.

Cars & Beyond set up shop on the old National Pride Car Wash lot after the existing structures were razed (other than the sign, which was re-purposed). From the name of the place, I assume they were connected with the nearby Tires & Beyond, which closed in 2022 with a promise to re-open, though that appears to have fallen through.

Actually until commenter Gypsie mentioned that this place had closed, and that it had definitely had had an online presence as open, I had it in the "never opened" category in my mind. I saw some guys setting things up, as you can see in the first picture, but after that, it never actually seemed to be a working car lot -- at least I never saw any stock there when I would drive by.

(Hat tip to commenter Gypsie)

UPDATE 10 February 2025 -- They are back:

It wasn't clear to me that I could turn down the street the Google map car did, so I did not get very good pictures of this at all, but JT's Jeep on Greystone is doing a total remodel on their showroom. I believe they are open in the interim, but the place is pretty well gutted at this point.

UPDATE 18 October 2024 -- A few more shots coming the other way:

(Hat top to commenter Larry)