Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I continue to have a bit of a fascination with Intersection Center. The whole property has been up for sale several years now, but (rather unsurprisingly) it has yet to sell. Fairly recently, the owner (I assume) went as far as to blank out the "Intersection Center" sign on the Broad River Road entrance to the complex, though it is still up on the Dutch Square side.

Despite the rapidly increasing decrepitude of all the buildings in the area, a few stores (or storefronts anyway, I think one may be some sort of church) do hold on. All Breed Dog Grooming Shop is not one of those. I do know it was open as recently as 1998, so I've simply listed the closing date as 2000s.

We used to get our dogs sheared evey summer, but we never had one groomed. It sounds like kind of a poodle thing to me (not that there's anything wrong with that..)

UPDATE 22 January 2020: Add map icon, update tags.

I believe this Hallmark store in Dutch Square occupied the same space as Browz-A-Bit.

I used to go into Browz-A-Bit all the time, but I can only specifically recall going into Kitty's once. As you may have gathered if you have read a lot of these posting, I'm a big fan of The Beach Boys, and for reasons which probably only make sense to them, they released a CD of live recordings and member solo tracks, Songs From Here and Back exclusively through Hallmark stores a few years back, and I picked up my copy (it's reallly pretty good) at Kitty's.

This story from The State says that sales at the Dutch Square location had declined from a million dollars a year to two hundred and fifty thousand, a decrease of 75%! Given that, I can see how closing the store made sense. Obviously this is bad for the struggling mall though. It's recently lost two national brands with this and Chick-Fil-A closing. On the plus side, it has gotten two new local restaurants, though the re-opening of the D'Avino's space as another pizzeria probably really only counts as restoring the status-quo from a mall point of view.

24 August 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

Well, it was probably inevitable, but Columbia's original Chick-Fil-A and one of the last original stores in Ductch Square has shut down. They had been in that same location for 40 years, which is like since the Pre-Cambrian in mall-time. I'm not a fan of chicken and don't believe I've ever been in a Chick-Fil-A to get so much as a drink (though I could be wrong, 40 years is a long time!), but I've always admired the chain a little bit for sticking to their guns about not opening on Sunday no matter how much more expedient that might be.

I'll try to get a shot from the other side of the corner at some point, there was a whole table of people seated there at the time.

On the plus side, a new pizza operation has set up in the recently closed D'Avino's on the other side of the hall from Chick-Fil-A

UPDATE 16 July 2010: Added a second picture.

UPDATE 28 January 2021: Add tags, full street address, map icon.

Here's another Dutch Square casualty -- the food court is looking pretty thin right now. (Chik-Fil-A keeps chugging on in the same space its occupied since at least 1970 tough..). I know D'Avino's was not the first restaurant in this spot, probably not the second either. I seem to have a vague notion that a hot-dog operation was there at one time, but I could easily be mistaken about that. On the face of it, you would think that the location is ideal for folks taking in a movie at the AMC theater just up the walk to duck in and have a slice before showtime, but in the event, I guess not.

On the "up" side for the old mall, there's finally something going into the Old Anabelle's spot, Burger Time Chargrill & Bar

(Hat tip to commenter Evelyn)

UPDATE 15 Feb 2011: Added Sbarro to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 17 Feb 2011: Added A Slice of Italy based on the comments.

Ok, this somewhat striking little building in the Dutch Square parking lot is now vacant. It was clearly a bank, and in fact the 1997 phonebook lists it as an NBSC. It must have closed some time ago though, because most of the google hits I get for 841 Dutch Square Boulevard are for Uptown Sounds.

The problem with that is that the hits all suggest that Uptown Sounds was a record store, and I don't recall that at all. Perhaps it went under before I came back to town around 2003, but I still thought I was familiar with the record stores in the area.

At any rate it's an interesting building (mainly because of the glassed bay extension on the end) though it's looking a bit frayed about the edges now -- the roof could certainly stand some paint.

UPDATE 13 November 2009: Added First Union to the post title based on the comments.

Taco Bell continues to retire its "old style" south-western looking stores for larger new stores. This one is on Broad River Road just to the south of the abandonded Pizza Hut.

It's interesting that they've left so many of the fixtures inside the old store, but on the other hand, what are they going to do with them? They don't fit the concept at the new store.

Although I'm not realy sure what the Taco Bell concept is anymore. I guess they have a small niche between places like Moe's, Qdoba and Chipolte and table-service Mexican restaurants, but I'd much rather have Moe's on the fast-food end and go to a table-service place if it's more than a burrito.

The new store is visible in the last picture and is 1928 Broad River road, though further down the street than the adjacent numbering would lead you to believe.

UPDATE 24 September 2011 -- Now open as Atlantic Seafood Restaurant:

I've posted pictures before of the older style, steeple-topped A&P stores. This one, on a Dutch Square outparcel was one in the "new" style A&P adopted before leaving the South Carolina market. (I'm not counting the "supercenter" type stores such as in North Myrtle Beach).

I don't believe I ever went into this store. I certainly spent plenty of time at Dutch Square as I've mentioned in a number of posts, but during most of that period I was a tween or teen, fixated on books and music, and hardly shopping for groceries at all (not to mention that Dutch Square was on the other side of town from our usual grocery destinations). I'm guessing the 1990s as the (vague) closing date for this store, but it could as easily have been the 1980s.

I think that after this store closed, the area was actually pretty grocery-less, with no stores I can think of in the same general vicinity. (Food Lion had a Bush River Road store, but it closed too).

UPDATE 12 March 2011: Updated closing date based on commenter Andrew's research.

OK, I'll admit that I'm not 100% sure that the Asian Market on Diamond Lane is the same one that opened recently across from Dutch Square at 1221 Bakersfield Road, but given the timing and the same marquee description, I think it's a pretty good bet (and I'm sure someone will set me straight otherwise).

I used to notice this place when I would cut through the mostly dead Intersection Center to see what remained and marvel that it was still in business. I guess part of that is that it's a destination -- if you need something that's historically exotic to SC and that you can't just hop-to-the-pig for, it doesn't matter if the store is off the beaten track. Still, I was glad to see them move to a better location. (Though believe it or not, a few stores are still have their doors open on Diamond Lane!). I got the Hong Chang Hang part of the name from here, as Chinese is Greek to me :-)

I was a bit surprised to see the address of the new store as Bakersfield Road -- if you had asked me I would have said the street was Dutch Square Boulevard all the way from Broad River Road to Bush River Road.

UPDATE 22 January 2020: Update tags, add map icon.

I already wrote about the S & K closing at the Two Notch Road store, so I don't have a lot to say about the Bush River Road closing. I'm still happy with the belt I got at the other store and didn't need to go inside this location, which is good as it was late Sunday and closed anyway.

I will say that if I were going too keep one Columbia store and close the other, I would keep Two Notch and close this one based solely on parking and ease of access. This little strip (which also contains a closed Sounds Familar location) is at the corner of Bush River Road and Colonial Life Boulevard. There is no parking on the Bush River side, and it's not great on the Colonial Life side. Of course, they are closing both stores so the point is moot.

UPDATE 4 June 2012 -- It's now Fashion's Unlimited:

I've written about Waldenbooks at Columbia Mall, and the other book store at Dutch Square Browz-a-Bit, but I've not said anything about the Dutch Square Waldenbooks, which for several years was my main book store.

Waldenbooks actually had two different locations in Dutch Square. The first one was sort of odd in that it was behind the corner of the main corridor and the first crosswalk, but not on the corner. There were two entrances to the store. One was on the crosswalk corrider before coming to the corner (where the Great Steak & Potato Co is today) and the other was on the main corridor just below Tapps (now the theaters), but the actual corner, Steak & Potato slot was another store.

The main corridor also goes markedly up hill from the crosswallk to Tapps, so the Walden's was a split-level store. If you call the crosswalk entrance the "front" (and that makes sense as they later closed off the exit to the main corridor), then the front of the store was on the ground and the back of the store was built on a platform that was, I believe, two steps up from the ground. My main interest was the science fiction rack, which was parallel to the main corridor and butted up against the raised platform forming the back of the store.

For at least one year, possibly two, I would spend one afternoon a week in the Dutch Square area while my mother would take my sister to piano lessons a couple of miles away. I had only a $0.60 weekly allowance, supplemented by $3.00 for mowing the lawn, so any actual purchase was a matter of careful deliberation and agonized tax calculation and penny counting (though it certainly helped that mass market paperbacks were still under a dollar in those years). In my hour or so of time, I would sometimes walk down to Boardwalk Plaza to peruse the Book Dispensary, but mainly I would circulate between Walden's and Browz-A-Bit trying to make up my mind.

I have strong memories of some of the books I bought at this Walden's (and in fact still have the books themselves in most cases). I recall in particular getting all of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, one at a time, with awful 70s covers, and Pyramid editions of all of Doc Smith's Skylark and Lensman books (with bad [what was it with the 70s and loss of design sense?!] but better covers as well). Covers aside, I must have read each of those books at least 20 times.

I also liked the humor section though I rarely bought anything there. One book in particular made a great impression on me as a 13 or 14 year old. I was amazed that it sat right out there in the open, and always wished I had the courage to pick it up. Buying it was out of the question, of course :-)

Later when I could drive on my own, Columbia Mall became my book hangout of choice what with Walden's on one end and B. Dalton on the other. I sort of lost track of the Dutch Square Walden's. I did know they had moved down the main corridor from their original location. The reason I heard was that the split-level store was not ADA compatible, but I don't know if that is true or not. At any rate, I found their new location less interesting than the original. What with that, moving out of town and the advent of "big box" bookstores, I doubt I was in the new store more than a dozen or so times. I didn't even hear about it when the store closed.

After Walden's, Fashion's Unlimited went into their slot, and I find it amusing to see how they stock the men's dress shirts in the old Walden's magazine display rack.