Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

It's definitely not ice cream weather tonight, but summer is coming -- eventually!

Ice Cream Taco was in this little strip mall on Sunset which has seen a number of things come and go over the last few years. I don't seem to have a closing for the previous operation in this suite, but as of 2014 when I did a cloing for Alibaba's, it was apparently recently vacated. According to The State, Ice Cream Taco opened here in March of 2022, and I actually learned something from the article. My assumption had been that the store name referred to some sort of frozen novelty served in sugar tacos rather than sugar cones, but in actuality, the place serves regular, hot, tacos -- and ice cream.

In November, they relocated to 2708 Emanuel Church Road.

(Hat tip to commenter Brian)

This sort of gas station, with no convenience store, and kind of isolated restrooms seems to be on the way out nowdays. For a customer it has the advantage of easy access to pay, but from the store side, there's none of the goods where they really make their money. The corner seems like a good location for *something*, so we'll see what happens.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

Here's another consequence of the Bi-Lo/Food Lion deal: The Food Lion on Platt Springs road has vacated its original location and has moved into the old Bi-Lo site on Emanuel Church Road. As of yet, there is nothing in the building.

UPDATE 10 May 2021 -- Here is the relocated store in its new location at 2916 Emanuel Church Road:

Well, I would rather not take pictures through the passenger side window just to keep the camera semi-dry, but those are the conditions that prevail lately..

This Bi-Lo is on Emanuel Church Road in West Columbia in a spot where I am fairly sure I have never been before. In fact, I drove out there last week, headed down that branch of Emanuel Chruch Road, decided that things were petering out and turned around and went the other way.

This store is part of the latest round of Bi-Lo & Harveys closings, and presumably will be gone by the end of the month as these closeouts don't usually take too long.

UPDATE 10 May 2021 -- Now open as a Food Lion:

I have been holding off doing a closing on the Family Dollar on Platt Springs Road because I wanted to get back out there and get some inside pictures before it closed, but for one reason or another, I never did, and it looks iffy at this point, if they are in fact still open.

This closing was announced before the recent big list of Family Dollar store shutterings. I was kind of surprised at that announcement because before that, they had seemed to be a chain on the move, and recently opened a new store on Two Notch. But the same thing happened to Fred's recently -- apparently the smaller discount store market is pretty cut-throat.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

In a companion closing to yesterday's, commenter Andrew sends these before (8 April 2011) and after (15 April 2011) pictures of the Blockbuster on Emanuel Church Road, saying:

This is located in West Columbia at the intersection of Emmanuel Church & Old Barnwell Road. The Street address is 2916B Emmanuel Church Road. It is in a shopping center called Sandy Ridge Square, anchored by Bi-Lo.

Thank you, Andrew. I confess that I had to plug the address into google maps and then zoom out twice before I had any idea of where Emanuel Church Road was.

(Andrew offers a hat tip to commenter Thomas for the heads-up)

UPDATE 5 October 2020: Change post address to "2926 Emanuel Church Road Suite B" from "2916-B Emanuel Church Road" for consistency. Update tags, add map icon.