Columbia Closings   What’s not in Columbia anymore

This Kmart, accessible from Fort Jackson Boulevard, Devine Street, Crowson Road and Wildcat Road has been there for my entire, remembered, life (it is technically a little younger than I am), and was a place I went many times with my Mother over the years (though probably not as many times as to the Two Notch store). In the beginning, the left side of the Kmart building was occupied by a Big Star grocery and then by an Old America Store. Finally, in the throes of the last good idea the chain had, Kmart converted to a Big-K format store and expanded into the old grocery space. This status-quo lasted a good number of years, but recently there have been signs of malaise like closing and trying to rent out the auto service bays.

I want to like Kmart as I have good childhood memories of the place, but their current strategy seems to be to not have a strategy, other than, perhaps, closing stores when Wal Mart opens nearby. Now, I'm not saying I know what a successful stragegy for them would be, but good heavens, they have to try *something*! Go 24 hours, get Martha Stewart back, co-brand with The Food Channel, open in-store bowling alleys -- something!

And hire some staff, yes, that's expensive, but if you're in a "bet the company" situation (and you are, whether you think of it that way or not) you've got to make shopping easy. The last time I stopped at this store, I was in a bit of a hurry and found my item quickly, but it was in a locked display case with nobody in the department. The staff I could find in other departments were very friendly, but couldn't leave their area and nobody ever showed up who could make the sale before I had to go -- so they didn't make that sale, and I'm not sure they can afford to not make sales.

Anyway, as of Memorial Day, the place was not completely picked clean and still had some reasonable looking bargins. I noticed in particular, that if you need some alkaline batteries, now is the time to get your "Die Hard" AAA, AA 9V & Cs (didn't see any Ds).

UPDATE 6 June 2012 -- And, it's gone!

UPDATE 11 June 2012 -- Pix from 7 June. The Devine Street roadside sign is gone, and the marquee sign is about to go:

UPDATE 14 June 2012: Added full 7 June 2012 photoset.

UPDATE 20 June 2012 -- As these pictures from 8 June show, all the signage is now gone (also added full 8 June photoset below):

Photosets:

Photoset 7 June 2012

Photoset 8 June 2012

Here's yet another Payday loan storefront that is no longer with us. This one is in the Bi-Lo/Staples plaza at the confluence of Devine, Cross Hill and Fort Jackson Boulevard. (Curiously, this strip mall does not seem to have a name, or at least not one on its marquee.)

Not that this closing leaves the place without a loan operation -- this is where Capitol Loan Office moved to from Main Street. And also note that if you lease this space, you apparently get a free MoneyGram neon sign, which is kind of nifty.

This little, much bar-ed, building is on Fort Jackson Boulevard, at Crowson Road, near the former Check World, and Jesudi's and across the street from La Brasca.

As far as I can tell, El As De Oros means "The Golden Ace", and Bar La Movida means something like "Party Bar" or "Groovy Spot Bar".

El As De Oros applied for their liquor license in 2004, which puts a timeframe on that operation. I am unsure of the status of Bar La Movida. When I took these shots, I was sure it was closed, but they applied for a liquor license in April of this year (2011), so it's possible I just never drive by late enough to see anyone there. The only data point I have on Bullwinkle's is that it was listed in the February 1997 phonebook and I don't know anything about RB's at all.

This has already been discussed a good bit on Have Your Say, but:

Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce.. Looks like another Columbia Burger King has closed shop. This one was on Devine Street, just before it intersects in a triangle with Fort Jackson Boulevard and Cross Hill Road. It's certainly a less tony section than the bulk of Devine, and a number of businesses have come and gone in the general area over the years. It is, however, also just across from where the upscale Whole Foods will be going into the former Family Mart / Kroger, so it will be interesting to see what eventually ends up here. Or, it could just be those poor registers saying "Cannot Locate Fileserver" for years..

(Hat tip to commenter Frank)

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Retail 101, you might think.

I need a gift for this weekend, and thought a pair of binoculars might be nice. As I was eating lunch at Ruby Tuesday, I decided I might as well check out K-Mart since it was right across the street, and on my way home. I didn't really expect a good result, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The place was like an uninhabited cavern, with seemingly about 5 employees in the whole store. The binoculars, as it turned out, were in Sporting Goods rather than cameras and electronics, and the section was completely unstaffed. Of course the half-way decent looking ones were all in a locked case, and totally unmarked as to price. (And all, even the best looking ones, were blister-packed -- Not the "classy" effect I wanted, or as easy to wrap as a boxed item, but I was willing to live with it).

I stood for about 10 minutes with no employees in the area and no bell or buzzer for the counter. When I looked further, there didn't seem to be any employees in that entire quadrant of the store. Finally I gave up and started walking out. As I passed Electronics the guy there asked me if I needed help finding anything, at which point I complained I needed someone to sell me something. He called on the PA for an associate to Sporting Goods, so I went back there and waited another 10 minutes, then left. That's a purchase going to Target, Wal-Mart or at any rate someone else..

Here's another payday loan company that's moved or maybe closed. This one is next to the new Wristwatch Doc location and next to the Applebee's at the corner of Devine and Fort Jackson. The door sign is ambiguous as to what happened, but given that the Chextop location looks to have been there a number of years, I'm guessing that Check World went out of business and sold their accounts next door.

The building itself puts me in the mind of a number of similar buildings around town. One of them, I think, is the Typewriter Exchange on Two Notch, and another is the nearby Dollar General on Beltline though in that case the building is a good bit larger.

Wristwatch Doc is the follow-on operation to Jewelery Mart in the Bruegger's building on Forest Drive next to Cardinal Newman. When they were setting up, their sign went up in the old Jewelery Mart spot on the roadside marquee:

and the shop door:

but was shortly joined by a sign for Artisan Jewelers:

That, I figured, was the "official" name for the place, but in the event it appears I was wrong and Artisan and Wristwatch Doc were separate businesses sharing retail space. In the event, Wristwatch Doc has now gotten their own storefront on Fort Jackson Boulevard, and has added gold buying to their portfolio. I did stop in once at the Forest Drive location, and they changed my watch battery quickly and with no problem (especially compared to a memorable battery change in Augusta Mall when I thought I might be getting my watch back in pieces..)

UPDATE 13 July 2011: Changed "(moved)" in the post title to "(expanded)" to account for the Jackson space. Also, they have a new sign on Forest now:

Here's another vacancy in the old Robo's/Slot Car building behind the Fort Jackson Boulevard K-Mart.

Their sign says they've moved to the Augusta Highway, but the phonebook shows that the Augusta location co-existed with this one, so I think it's more of a consolidation than a move. I don't know about that location, but this one is not ideal for drive-by traffic. You have to be coming into the K-Mart the back way to see it, and given that the K-Mart auto bays on that side are closed (and I believe the garden center may be as well) and that the general "pull" of K-Mart is pretty low right now in general, it can't have got a lot of notice.

I have to say that the Pizza King looks like a really stern monarch. If you didn't order the anchovies on your pie, you would eat it and like it..

I don't actually remember seeing this place in operation, and I normally keep an eye out for pizza. Either it closed while I was living out of town, or given the odd location (Fort Jackson Boulevard where Crowson Road follows Gill Creek past K-Mart) and lack of apparent parking, my eyes just slid over it.

I know Pizza King can't have been the first operation in this building -- That illuminated arrow looks like it dates back to the 60s at least.

I just thought this one was a little odd. The ad is from the 1985 Bellsouth phonebook. Sometime between then and now, the name of this backgate restaurant at Fort Jackson Boulevard & I-77 was changed from Saki to Saky. If you look at the photo, you can see how the 'I' was replaced by a 'Y' in the mural (which is very similar, though not identical to the Yellow Pages art).

The only reason for something like this that I can think of is that the ownership changed at some point, and the new owner didn't have permission to keep using the same name, but was able to keep something very similar..