Columbia Closings   What’s not in Columbia anymore

Women's gym Curves moved out of this little strip just past Piney Grove Road sometime in 2011, to set up shop down the street at Seven Oaks Shopping Center (6169 Saint Andrews Road). As of last week, I believe this storefront was still empty.

This 24 hour gym was in Boozer Shopping Center on the Bush River Road side just a few slots down from Dunkin' Robbins. This is not too far away from the former Curves gym on Colonial Life Boulevard.

I wrote about this place before, or at least it's main building when I did a closing for Piggly Wiggly Store 62. After The Pig closed, the building became a Gold's Gym which with this demolition moves to the old Sofa Express slot at Sandhill (apparently with plans for the old Ashley Furniture Homestore storefront as well).

As of Sunday 20 June 2010, the site is in sort of an odd state. From the front it almost appears untouched, but most of the back side has already been completely gutted or torn down, leaving the facade as sort of a potemkin shopping center.

According to commenter "mg", Dick Smith Nissan will be locating here eventually.

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Fernandina Road seems to have been pretty volatile lately with a number of closings and moves. This particular storefront is between the Piney Grove and Harbison exits, and is pretty visible from I-26 though I had never driven down that stretch of Fernandina before. It appears that The Sportsgym has moved to 5000 Fernandina Road, behind Home Depot. This building still houses a thrift store for a very worthy sounding charity.

UPDATE 29 September 2011: Finally add Ebert Sportswear Manufacturing to the post title. (Although my Feb 1997 phonebook gives that as 5000 Fernandina Road).

This building, across the street from Richland Mall and just south of Moe's has been a number of things over the years, with none of them seeming to last long. Right now, I can only find two other names (and a Doctor's practice) before H2, but I'm sure there were many others as loopnet says the building dates back to 1969. Part of my difficulty may be that the address is sometimes given as "2100 Beltline Boulevard" and sometimes as "2100 N Beltline Boulevard". One operation I sort of recall had an odd name as though it was a Christian Youth Fraternity or something like that.

I'm not sure what "joining" means in the case of H2 and Tonic. I suspect it just means "we transferred your membership". The H2 facebook page seems unchanged since last year, so it's possible the place was closed for a while before I noticed it.

UPDATE 21 May 2010 -- Here's an ad for European Health Spas (as mentioned in the comments) from the 19 Feb 1979 edition of The State. I can explain why the street address doesn't match. The ad lists 2204, which apparently doesn't exist today (at least as google-able retail), but clearly the ad namechecks "Richland Mall". Perhaps there was a street renumbering in the 1980s? Anyway I've added it to the post title and here's the ad:

UPDATE 29 July 2010 -- Apparently it's going to be Austral Salon next: