Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This space on River Drive has been a number of things since I started keeping track, moving from automative related businesses to restaurants. Lambs Bread was the follow-on here to Vibes, which closed in late 2018. As far as I can tell, Lambs Bread was open into late summer of 2020, and got generally good reviews. There was no real-estate sign on the property when I stopped by, so I'm not sure what is next for this property.

UPDATE 27 June 2022 -- Now Hook Fish & Chicken Of Columbia:

Vibes Restaurant was priming to open when I took those first two shots, apparently in March 2018, for the Dimp's closing. If you click on the street address tag below, you will see that this building has been a number of things over the past decade, with none of them sticking very long. Hopefully Lamb's Bread will have better luck. It's certainly a new concept for what has been mostly a diner.

Dimp's Cafe & Grill was the follow-on to several restaurants here at 3600 River Drive, including at least Buck's Cafe and 3 Point Cafe & Grill. I have not gotten around to eating at any of these so far.

I'm not sure when Dimp's closed, but I drive this stretch often enough that I think I would have noticed it before now if it were any longer ago than January or February of 2018. The place is now Vibes though they do not yet have a sign on the building itself.

UPDATE 21 September 2021: Adding map icon.

As I was coming home today via River Drive heading towards Two Notch, I ran into this roadblock just across North Main. It looks like perhaps they are doing railroad track work. At any rate, Sunset Drive was completely closed. I'm not sure what the offical detour is -- it was a right turn onto North Main, and I just turned left to go back via Fontaine Road.

Uncle Ned's soul food restaurant was the follow-up operation in this building to Dolo's and Varsity, D'Jasz &JS Renee. I'm not sure when it opened, but sometime after Mid-July 2016. My memory is that Varsity was there for many years, but since then, things have not stuck.

(Hat tip to commenter Toby)

UPDATE 12 March 2018 -- As mentioned by commenter Justin, this space is about to re-open as S & A Seafood Market & Restaurant:

I noticed the other weekend that 3 Point Cafe & Grill, the follow-on to Buck's Cafe, on River Drive had now closed and that a new restaurant was in its place: Dimp's Cafe & Grill. That makes three restaurants into this spot since it was remodeled. Hopefully this one will stick around for a while.

UPDATE 21 September 2021: Adding map icon.

Dolo's was the follow-on operation to Varsity / D'Jasz / J S Rennee near the intersection of Sunset and North Main. As these not very good pictures show, the place is now well on the way to re-opening as Uncle Ned's.

(Hat tip to commenter Justin)

Pretty plainly a service station at one time, this building at the intersection of River Drive, Sunset Drive and Clement Road had most recently been a title loan operation before Buck's Cafe moved in.

I presume that the cafe was associated with Buck's Market catty-cornered across the intersection, but I don't know that for a fact. I believe Buck's opened here in 2014, closed for remodeling around the end of that year and then re-opened in 2015. Somewhere I have some pictures of the restaurant in operation, but as usual, cannot put my hands on them right now.

The follow-on operation to Buck's is the aptly named 3 Point Cafe & Grill which judging from the sign is a "home cooking" type of restaurant.

UPDATE 21 September 2021: Adding map icon.

Hungry hungry hippo..

I've always wondered if this little diner by the North Main Sonic was originally connected with the old North Main Street Varsity Restaurant.

While the Varsity name and pennant have always been there as far as I can recall, J S Renee is fairly recent. Back in the 90s and until sometime in the 2000s, the sub-marquee was D'Jasz which apparently also had a location on Rosewood.

(Hat tip to commenter Justin)

This little financial center was in the old A & P shopping center at the top of the hill on Sunset Drive. Most recently the complex was a church, but there remained a few commercial storefronts during that phase. In fact, as far as I can tell, the adjacent beauty parlor is still open for business.

Apart from the old "steeple" style A & P architecture, this part of the plaza is interesting for the skylights which you can see in the fifth picture. Somehow the name Cash-O-Matic invokes the same era as the buildings.

UPDATE 21 June 2022: Updating tags and adding map icon.

UPDATE 27 April 2025: I am adding "Shopping Center" to the post title after "Cash-O-Matic" because the whole place looks to be about to go. I stopped by a week or two ago, and noticed that the building on the right hand end (which I think was last some sort of Dollar General-ish store) has either undergone a partial demolition, or the roof just fell in. Does anyone know if this strip ever had a name? I can't ever recall seeing a roadside sign for the place as a whole.

To answer my own questions, this was Sunset Shopping Center, and the property was bought by a church to build apartments, but the job eventually turned out to be to big for them to handle, so they are now working with a third party developer on the project.

I have changed the "Shopping Center" in the post title to "Sunset Shopping Center"