Columbia Closings   What’s not in Columbia anymore

I believe this is the final New Life Fitness World closing, after this, this, and this.

As the Two Notch and Irmo locations favored each other, so this location, off of Hardscrabble near Clemson, favors the Lexington site, right down to the tattered flag atop semi-circular entryway. LoopNet has a nice aerial view of the property, which as of yet is still fully equipped as a gym.

Attractive as the building is, you have to wonder how the next tenant will feel about being on New Life Fitness Drive..

Well, the post on the Irmo location seems to have gotten a bit of traction today, so why not make a clean breast of it and post the final one?

The Lexington New Life Fitness World is off of Charter Oak Road, which connects US-1 and US-378 which are more or less parallel at that point. The gym is on a little court that seems to have some sort of failed building showcase on it, which I may post another day, though it is well behind the set of empty foundations.

This building is done in a completely different style than the other two, and seems to have had at least one other business co-located inside. There is something rather sad about the forlorn swim-noodles.

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Comparing the Irmo New Life Fitness World with the Two Notch one, you can see that the chain had a well defined aesthetic.

It's also quite a large building, and presumably mostly hollow in the middle. It's hard to think what could go in there without extensive remodeling. (Recall that Columbia Athletic Club had to be completely gutted to become Trader Joe's).

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I first wrote about this lot in the closing for North 1 Drive-In, a location that had a certain notoriety amongst teenage boys. Interestingly, the address given during the theater days is 8757, which is two blocks off of the current number. But then this was pretty much the boonies back then.

Not being a big exercise fan, what I constantly noticed about the New Life incarnation was the electronic banner on the top of their roadside sign. This normally ran a digital temperature reading, and it was never right -- Generally it wasn't even close.

Like Columbia Athletic Club before them, New Life has apparently lost the local battle against the (very fit) 500 pound gorilla that is Gold's Gym. Curiously, apparently the only New Life location remaining is in Cedar Rapids Iowa.

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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.

Update 26 January 2014 -- The new location:

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.

LoopNet says this store was once a Piggly Wiggly, but it's the Harris Teeter label-scar most visible on the side of the building next to CVS.

For some reason, I always get Harris Teeter and Winn Dixie confused, and I had it in my mind that HT had abandoned South Carolina when that was actually WD. However, it does appear that Harris Teeter has abandoned Columbia. Their store locator shows the closest location as being around Rock HIll.

Currently this whole plaza is mostly empty except for the CVS and some sort of bank back-office-looking building. That's a little surprising given that it serves Polo Road, which I tend to think of as an upscale area, and not really in line with the Food Lion which anchors the next plaza on Two Notch, on the other side of Polo.

UPDATE 27 February 2014 -- This is to be a Planet Fitness gym:

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: