Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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4730 Forest Drive:

6118 Saint Andrews Road

7900 Garners Ferry Road:

Commenter Mr. BO sends the pictures of the Garners Ferry Rite Aid, saying

I remember when this place was Rosewood Furniture which was raised to make an Eckerds, then I think it was a CVS for a short while before becoming a Rite-Aid. Now Wallgreens purchased the place. With a Wallgreens just a block away, I sort of fear for this store's future. They're not in the system yet so I can't do my prescriptions from Rite-aid's web site and the transfer function only lets you select the store across Garner's ferry from Hazelwood.

I had noticed similar signs on the Forest Acres and Irmo Rite Aid stores: This Rite Aid now has a Walgreens Pharmacy, which is rather like going to Sears and seeing a sign saying This Sears is now stocked by J C Penny.

Looking at google, and Wikipedia, what seems to have been going on is that Walgreens tried to buy the whole of Rite Aid, but the merger was not approved for anti-trust reasons, and Walgreens ended up with only about 2000 Rite Aid locations. Now, the rump Rite Aid chain is in negotiations with the Albertson grocery chain to merge with it.

What actually happens to the stores that Walgreens got is unclear. I would expect many of them to eventually be reflagged, but some of them are really too close to existing Walgreens locations, and those will probably be closed. How close is "too close"? We'll know when it happens, I suppose.

UPDATE 25 September 2018 -- As mentioned by several commenters, the Saint Andrews Road store is now officially a Walgreens:

Big database crash..

Bear with me while I bring older posts back manually. It will take a while, and I'll probably have to lump all the comments together on each post.

As you may have guessed from the infrequency of posts lately, I've been out of town. It sounds like everything broke loose while I was gone. I see today I can't even count on driving back.

Everybody keep dry and stay safe!

UPDATE 6 October 2015 -- These pictures come in from commenter Rick who says:

The first picture is of a brick retaining wall next to my driveway where we park behind the house. So much water came down the hill in my backyard, about 35 feet of the wall collapsed.

The second photo was taken with me standing at the end of my driveway. The dam at the lake across the street from my property breached and so much water came rushing by it pushed a car into the ditch.

Sorry about the quality of the second photo. It was raining hard and I must have moved while trying to hold the umbrella. I did not check the photo before rushing back inside.

Well, we can see the car going off the road, which is the gist of it..

Must be time for a new Only At Pawleys calendar for 2015!

Seven designs to choose from including a totally new set of 13 images for 2015. Most designs are available in standard and oversized formats.

Have a great Turkey Day, and appreciate those you share it with.