Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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)

Sticking with Wells Fargo for another day, the company recently announced that they will close this administrative center on Greystone Boulevard next summer. The State has the story, along with the astounding statistic that they have laid off 40,000 people over the last few years. It is certainly a shame that so many folks have to suffer for a number of bone-headed and unethical stunts management has pulled over the last decade.

(Hat tip to commenter Tom)

While we were talking about the Walk-up BOA ATM on Saint Andrews, I recalled this one on Greystone, and was curious to see if it were still there. It's not, and the Google Reviews suggest it probably closed around 2020. I think that if a place is not a natural foot-traffic spot, people are increasingly reluctant to get out of their cars and box themselves into one of these..

Commenter James R notes the sale of Jim Hudson Hyundai on Greystone to Peacock Hyundai as of June.

This is just down from the old Stivers location, but unlike that closing, will not be taking a new car dealership off Greystone, which, I think, used to have quite a few more than it does now.

I do find it a little interesting in that Peacock is a bit of an unusual name for a dealership, which tend to have a human name (usually a man's) associated with the brand.

(Hat tip to commenter James R)

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I'll admit I'm a sucker for anything mechanical, so I could toss out more of thes pictures, but I'm not going to.

This little automated carwash is on Broad River Road at Riverhill Circle, just across that street from China Hut Ace and just below the 'T' where Greystone Boulevard hits Broad River. I like the way that it seems a little bossy with its "Stop/Back Up/Drive Forward" warnings and the way it keeps up with the situation through observational pronouncements like: "Car Is Soaking".

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"Beam Me Up, Scotty".

Enterprise on Broad River Road has warped over to the old Stivers Lincoln Mercury location on Greystone Boulevard as of early April.

For some reason I find the beat up old picnic table outside the car corral to be kind of endearing.

I didn't know much about Green Hole back in the day. In fact I didn't even know where it was. I just knew that it was a place where the cool kids hung out and did cool things. Listening to some stories at various class reunions, I'm a little surprised that all the cool kids managed to live to grow up.. :-)

Since I started Columbia Closings, the topic of Green Hole has come up a number of times in the comments, and finally someone mentioned where it was and I was able to locate it on google maps. Apparently the hole itself is an old abandoned quarry pit, and is located between Greystone Boulevard and Stoneridge drive, bounded by Clear Channel Radio, Greystone Boulevard, Jim Hudson Hyundai, the old Stivers Lincoln-Mercury, and a condo complex.

Back in the 70s I think that the place was regarded as rather remote, and was just off in the woods, undeveloped. Nowdays, the condo complex has surrounded it and put boardwalks over parts of it -- I probably could have brazened my way onto those, but I decided to leave that for another day, and stuck pretty much to taking pictures around the edges.

OK, cool kids! Now is your chance to tell your stories in the comments. I gather that they mainly involve minimal adult supervision, maximal beer and deep, deep water..

UPDATE 8 March 2012 -- OK, I wasn't really happy with the way the pictures above came out. Actually looking down at the place, I could get the details, but in a picture it just looks like a bunch of clutter. To fix that, I went into the condo complex and got the much better shots below:

UPDATE 10 March 2012: Here is one woman's memory of Green Hole.

And here is a short video of some kids taking the plunge around 2010 (some nsfw language).

UPDATE 16 June 2020 -- Please check this comment for some of the very interesting history of this quary from commenter Paul Armstrong.

Wine And Dine In Elegance -- The ad is from the 1970 Southern Bell phonebook, and continues the tradition of restaurants being generally open later in those days than now. King Arthur's also continues the theme started here a few weeks about Medieval English themed restaurants in Columbia. The ad doesn't give you much idea what to expect, but surely they must have had round tables and drinking grails..

I have to admit I have absolutely no memory of King Arthur's. That stretch of Broad River road was one we practically never took in the 1970s, and I would have had my nose in a book at any rate. The property is owned by Wray now though the don't seem to use the 725 street number. I'm not sure if they building is King Arthur's or if that was knocked down. The current building doesn't look much like a restaurant to me.

After King Arthur's, the place was at least two other restaurants. Mother Tuckers apparently ran from 1992 to 1995, and I have no information on Pizza Bistro other than one site believes it was a music venue.

UPDATE 6 April 2011 -- Well, from all the comments I found that the above pictures focus on the wrong Wray lot, and that King Arthur's was more on the other side of Riverhill Circle on the lot where the curvy white Wray building now is. The pictured building is 100 Greystone Boulevard and a former Heilig-Meyers furniture store until its closure in 2001. This ad is from the Feb 1997 Bellsouth phonebook:

UPDATE 9 April 2011 -- Commenter Dick sends this yearbook picture posed in front of King Arthur's:

For a while in the 1970s, we were a Mercury family: Mercury Comet to be exact. The first car of my father's that I can remember was some sort of 1950s Plymouth, very rounded -- and that's just about all I can remember about it. The first car of my mother's I remember was what I believe actually was her first car: A 1950s Willis.

I remember that one much better than the Plymouth since my father drove his to work while our mother dragged us everywhere in the WIllis. In particular I can recall that the Willis had a manual choke, a radio with tubes that took forever to warm up and never really worked right, and that when the rear floor fell out, my uncle replaced it with some sort of grate, and we could watch the road under the car as we rode along in the back seat.

When the Plymouth keeled over, my father bought our first Mercury Comet. It was an early 60s model, a white coupe with pseudo tail-fins, and he had aftermarket seat-belts installed, making it our first car with them. (Not that we ever used them). Then, when the Willis became a Willisn't, my mother got a late 60s or early 70s Comet coupe as well.

I don't remember too much negative about my father's Comet (and again, it was not the one we kids rode in much), but my mother's was a constant source of repair bills. We bought it at about the time Detroit was forgetting how to make cars in general, and three-on-the-tree cars in particular. They would still sell you one, of course, but Ford seemed to have no real idea how to build a clutch or manual transmission, and the dealer certainly had no idea how to fix one. Even leaving aside the transmission, the car had a host of issues like the radiator heat sensor that left us stranded on US-301 somewhere between here and Florida, and the cigarette lighter that almost set the car on fire despite the fact that nobody smoked. Add to that the whole "coupe" concept when trying to run a car pool, and admittedly, the unsightly mess of cables I added trying to compensate for the lack of a radio by jury-rigging a cassette player didn't help matters.

At some point my parents completely lost faith in the dealer (I don't think it was Stivers), and we started taking the cars to Bob Andrews on Harden Street, but in the end it was Mercury that converted us to a Toyota family.

Early this summer, Ford lost faith in Mercury as well, and announced that the brand would be phased out by the end of 2010. Interestingly, by then, Stivers had already lost the concession. This 2009 year end story from The State is a little vague on exactly what happened, but says that the Lincoln-Mercury concession was moving from Stivers to Classic Ford. However the article also says that the Stivers location would remain open, selling sell Mitsubishis and Subarus and was looking to add another brand as well. Apparently that didn't work out, and as of late September the mercury was falling and the whole corner lot was up for sale.

UPDATE 2 July 2011 -- Here are some night shots of the place from 24 October 2010:

UPDATE 22 June 2013 -- It's now an Enterprise Rent-A-Car: