Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

We've mentioned this closing several times in Have Your Say, but Blythewood based Chubby's Burgers has closd their Jackson Square location. This storefront is a mention on Good Luck With That, having hosted a number of different restaurants in the relatively short time the plaza has existed.

I always expected I would check out Chubby's sooner or later, but if it's a matter of driving out to Blythewood, that may not now happen.

The Free Times has the story.

Well. This was a long time coming, but pretty much inevitable. This Panera Bread location had been epically mismanaged for a number of years, as a glance at the Google reviews will show. I used to come here pretty frequently as it is fairly close to my house and they had a patio that was pleasant in temperate weather. However over the years things just got worse and worse with tables never being wiped down, the dish return stations going unbussed, the bathrooms unscrubbed and the counter almost completely unmanned. If you did manage to place an order, something inevitably would be wrong with it, and if you ordered coffee, the urn would invariably be cold. Add in being panhandled at first outside and later inside, and it was just not a good experience.

Apparently the space is being prepped for a Metro Diner, a chain with which I am unfamiliar, but which appears to be sort of a down-home breakfast & comfort food place.

In the meantime, I have found the Panera on Killian Road to be pretty well run, if harder to get to.

(Hat tip to commenter Larry)

That was pretty quick work. The pictures of the store in operation were taken on 9 October 2018, and by 16 October, the signage is down and the store is empty save for a few mattresses stacked against the front wall -- No closing sale, no bargains, just gone.

This is the second vacancy in the still fairly new Jackson Square (which replaced, most recently, Liquids Gentlemen's Club). Earlier in the year, the adjacent Tijuana Flats closed, and has yet to be replaced.

UPDATE 15 November 2021 -- Now a Club Champion gym:

UPDATE 13 December 2021 -- Here's the other side of the Club Champion:

My sister mentioned that she had heard this place was closing, so I was able to get some interior shots in advance of that last week. I wish I had gotten the hot sauce bar, which was an impressive array of pumps.

Initially, I wasn't quite sure what to make of Tijuana Flats (and kept thinking it was Tortilla Flats for some reason..). It wasn't like a Moe's or Qdoba building hand-held burritos, and it wasn't really a sit-down Mexican restaurant, but somewhere in between the two. I finally figured it out though, and liked the place pretty well. In the summer, the front sidewalk was generally in the shade by the time I would get there, and it was nice to eat outside. In the winter, I liked to go the the back of the store and sit in the sunshine coming through the back windows. My only real criticisms are that I thought they needed a drink stand so you didn't have to go begging for refills (which they were happy to provide, but it's a quirk of mine) and I thought they should go with the sit-down Mexican restaurant concept of free salsa with the chips.

I'm pretty sure this is the first closing for the fairly new Jackson Square strip mall, though of course the whole former strip mall on the site was closed and razed years ago. The Tijuana Flats Lexington location remains open.

(Hat tip to my sister)

UPDATE 13 December 2021 -- Now a Vampire Penguin:

Also adding map icon.