Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

Lexington Dry Cleaning on Two Notch near Sesqui is moving, or consolidating, to Blythewood, leaving a vacancy in Sesqui Center. I find it interesting from their heads-up sign that they do a lot of their business by delivery now. I guess in the age of Amazon Prime, Grubhub and home grocery delivery that makes sense.

(Hat tip to commenter Thomas)

As I mentioned once, I have fond memories of quirky products from childhood visits to the old Pier 1 on Garners Ferry. In recent years, the place has rather fallen off of my radar screen to the extent that I didn't even know that they had had a store in the Sparkleberry area until commenter Andrew mentioned it in regards to the old Dentsville location. The State has a bit of information on the closing -- the main reason given is too many locations for the market.

As you can see from the picture, as of this writing, the storefront is yet another Halloween pop-up store.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

I've been vaguely aware of The Lite House for a long time. I think I even recall them advertising on WIS Radio many years ago. Somehow that never led me to visit either location even though I have needed a lamp shade or harp every now and then.

This site is a little hard to get to, at least during rush hour as it is a difficult left turn off of Two Notch (assuming you are travelling towards Sandhill). While it is further away from me, I like the situation of the Bush River Road location better.

As of now, the site is closed and for sale, but the stock has not been warehoused or transferred across town.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

I think somebody once commented on the site that this building was originally a Piggly Wiggly, but I can't find that comment right now. I don't remember that, and I don't really recall it being a Pier 1 either, though I think that may have been when I was living out of town.

At any rate, it has been furniture store Hines for a good few years now, and apparently would have continued so if the owners were willing to renew the lease.

That they were not implies they must have another tenant already in mind -- I don't think this is an area where you give up a sure thing on just the speculation that you can do better. I guess we'll see.

(Hat tip to commenter Sidney)

UPDATE 2 October 2019: Based on the comments, I have added Piggly Wiggly to the post title.

LoopNet says this building was built in 1969. It was clearly a dry cleaner in its first life, although I do not know which one. After that, I think it was several things, but most recently a beauty salon, which always had lots of nice plants inside whenever I would drive by.

This former Philips 66 has featured here before, when it was Buck Cooper Motors. Since then, Finish Line Auto Sales (at least) has moved in and out. Their sign says they have moved to 10609 Two Notch Road, which is just a bit beyond Pontiac House Of Pizza, though it seems to be officially an Elgin address.

This place caught my eyes many years ago for an odd reason: The name Impress.

As it happens, I worked for many years with a brand of laser printer called Imagen (since bought out by QMS). We had many of these printers from a former contract, and used to deploy them on new contracts wherever a laser printer was wanted. Unfortunately, the printers did not support HP PCL or Adobe PostScript, they only supported their own proprietary page description language called.. IMPRESS, which very little software supported. In practice, we mostly had to use them in daisy-wheel printer emulation mode.

None of which has anything to do with this store, of course. As I said, it has been here for quite a while and is now running a final clearance sale, so if you need some prom formal wear, or a bridesmaid dress, now might be the time to go looking.

(Hat tip to commenter Andrew)

I have used Young's several times, perhaps most notably for service on my father's venerable Toro, but also to get some keys cut after Home Depot botched them. They are an old-school place where there's a bit of everything.

As reported by commenter Matt, the owner is now retiring, and they are running a closing sale.

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

UPDATE 16 July 2019: The State says that the final auction day is 17 August 2019, so I have changed the closing date in the post title to reflect that. They also say the lot will become a Circle K.

UPDATE 18 November 2019 -- As mentioned in the comments, this building has been razed:

I noticed in my visit to Columbia Mall back in March that there was an empty storefront on the upper level for Frontline Hair Designs.

As it turns out, they have moved, and have been open again since April in their new location at 9557 Two Notch Road Suite H. This is in the Sesqui Center shopping center just east of Spring Valley. You can check out their Facebook page here.

Here's another de-branching, this one on Two Notch more or less across from Spring Valley. You can see the NBSC signage up at LoopNet, and I find the area description from RealtyTrac rather interesting:

For the surrounding community of Columbia, SC 29223, the nearby schools are above average and include Windsor Elementary, E L Wright Middle and Richland Northeast High. The overall crime risk for this area is slightly high with 4 criminal and sex offenders residing within 1 mile. The natural disaster risk for this area includes very low earthquake risk, very high tornado risk, and minimal flood risk.