Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This was probably inevitable given the chain's ongoing bankruptcy, but still it's sad to see a decades long area staple go. The ax came down rather quickly here, as CNN reported the latest closing list today, and by the time they had published, this location was already shuttered.

The State has a bit more.

(Hat tips to commenters Tom & Larry)

I said in another post that Asian Buffet is the last stage a restaurant building goes through.

I didn't mean that in any disparaging sense -- I have a lot of admiration for the folks who, often as a family effort, can take a marginal location and make a go of it. Unfortunately, as we have seen before, it doesn't always work.

In this case, the building was the former Red Lobster location next to the former Olive Garden on Decker Blvd. The Red Lobster closed in the general flight from Decker towards Sandhills which also took the neighboring Olive Garden. I'm not sure why Jumbo Buffett failed in this case. It could be that the established buffet on Two Notch by Lowes was too nearby, perhaps the Red Lobster building was just too large for an operation with less traffic to pay the utilities or perhaps people never got past the "jumbo shrimp" jokes. Whatever the reason, I recall this operation as rather short lived, no more than a year or so.

UPDATE 19 Feb 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 26 August 2024: Add Red Lobster to the post title, edit tags, add map icon.

UPDATE 9 July 2026: Both this property and the neighboring former Olive Garden were subject to arson recently. This site on 10 June 2026 and the Olive Garden on 9 June. I didn't see any exterior damage to the Olive Garden building, but this one is clearly much worse for wear, and is, I think, beyond recovery though that has probably been true for a while.

You can read about the fires & investigation in The State here and here.