Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

For most of my life, this building was a Gulf Station and was our default family choice for gas and light service.

After the place closed as a Gulf, it seemed to go through several phases that I am now hazy on. In particular, I think there was a period after it was a full service station and before Circle K when it was still a gas-only station, but without service. During this period, the service bays were closed, but the car-wash bay was still in operation, and you could get a code to with each fill-up to go through the wash.

Circle K took over the place in sort of a half-hearted way. They never really committed to making the place a "modern" convenience store, and the service and wash bays remained walled off, but unconverted, forcing the convenience operation into a really small cramped space. In particular, they never put in interior bathrooms as all stores now do, and the old Gulf restrooms on the Trenholm Road side of the station remained the only ones (though they were never ADA-ed).

Though the place remained my default gas station, there were some inconvenient touches to that aspect as well. First they gradually closed off the Trenholm Road door. At first sometimes you would go and it would be open and sometimes it would be locked, then finally it was always locked. Second, they took the pump locks off the pump handles. That meant you had to hold the pump handle throughout the whole fueling operation. I think some places feel this is a safety issue, but I say that's bunk. Thirdly, from time to time, they seemed to have the slowest pumps in SC. On those days, I think if I had not pre-paid, I would have just driven off rather than wait for the gentle trickle to creep up to $20. (Of course nothing *creeps* to $20 nowdays..)

Initially when the place was a Union 76, even though the store itself was technically a Circle K, they signage played up the 76 affiliation, and the Circle K branding was almost invisible. Sometime last fall, they completely, and messily, disaffiliated from Union 76, knocking out the logo panel on their street sign, and pasting Circle K branding on the pumps (take off the pumps now that the CK is closed).

(Hat tip to commenter Matt)

UPDATE 23 May 2011 -- various pictures as below:

On 17 May, it appeared that the underground tanks were being pumped dry:

On 18 May, they started digging up the underground tanks. Hopefully all those holes in the tanks were made during the excavation:

By 21 May, the tanks had been carted off:

By 22 May, the hole has been partly filled in, the pumps are off in the corner, and the next step is unclear. Knock the building down? Start an interior refit?

UPDATE 16 June 2011 -- Hmm. New sign, and it appears that the building is slated to be torn down. A ground lease is a type of lease where the tennant gets to build on the land during the lease period, and of course build-to-suit means a new building as well. Looking at the supports for the canopy on the Trenholm Road side, it appears that they have already decided that backing into things doesn't matter anymore..

UPDATE 18 July 2011 -- Well, demolition has started. Already the canopies have been knocked down. They haven't torn into the building itself as far as the walls go, but it sure doesn't look like it's long for the world:

UPDATE 19 July 2011 -- Well the end has come! Interestingly, the bathrooms were the last piece left standing. I shot some video of them knocking down part of the bathroom wall, but it didn't come out:

UPDATE 19 July 2011: The whole building is down now. Also added first pic of Circle K logo at top:

UPDATE 20 July 2011: Add 18 July 2011 photoset below.

UPDATE 21 July 2011: Today they knocked down the street sign and the trailer is gone. (No pix yet). Also I added the 19 July photoset below.

UPDATE 23 September 2011 -- Well, the place is apparently to be a Circle K again according to the new sign in the lot. And in the meantime, the old chargecard sign hangs on..

UPDATE 5 May 2012 -- It appears that new construction has finally started, or at least excavation:

UPDATE 21 May 2012 -- Landscaping and excavation continue and now they have boarded out the foundations for part of the new construction. Apparently they will be building in what was green space in the former Bell's Drive-In as well as the old Gulf/Circle K lot. At least my memory is that Gulf & Bell's sort of shared a parking lot, but that Bell's itself sat in this little strip between the gas station and the drugstore which never had a building after Bell's was torn down:

UPDATE 2 June 2012 -- The new underground tanks are going in:

UPDATE 6 June 2012 -- Looks like it's going to be a fairly small building:

UPDATE 17 August 2012 -- The new building is almost ready to open. In fact, I saw a car pull up to the "Redbox" and apparently rent a movie:

UPDATE 12 September 2012 -- The construction is finished, and the new store is open. I was conflicted as to whether I should mark the post as "open again" given that it is a completely new building, but in the end I did. If it ever closes again though, it will get a separate closing..

PHOTOSETS

Photoset 18 July 2011
Photoset 19 July 2011
Photoset 20 May 2012

UPDATE 29 March 2023: Adding map icon & updating tags.

I don't know anything about Tires Unlimited other than that they sold used tires and were located in a very neat little building that was obviously once a service station.

It appears to be of an early '60s vintage, similar in some ways to the old Bill DuBose 66 station on Covenant.

The building now seems to be an impromptu parking lot for Blue Ribbon, and looks like it could use some TLC.

UPDATE 18 March 2011: Added "Patterson's Texaco" to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 25 May 2016 -- This place is to be a gas station again, albeit with a convenience store rather than service bays this time. Cheap Way is coming:

I first wrote about this building in a closing for The Village Bistro in August 2009. After that operation closed, La Fogata Mexican Restaurant set up shop, lasting at least a year, and apparently closing around the start of March this year.

I never managed to make it to La Fogata though I do like Mexican food. It's just a good ways from Forest Acres, and if I'm not in the mood for Moe's or a Mexican Mexican place like San Jose or Casa Linda, I usually end up at El Chico, headed the other way from town. Commenter Kp who tipped the closing says it was pretty good though.

(Hat tip to commenter Kp)

UPDATE 23 March 2011 -- Well, the signage is down and the place is up for lease again:

UPDATE 26 May 2016 -- As mentioned in the comments, this is now Top Dawg Tavern:

I was a bit reluctant to do this post yet, hoping that the place was going to make it, but I've been by several times within the posted hours (including a Saturday evening) and found it dark (though the phone still rings..)

At any rate, I first wrote of this building when I did a closing for longtime tenant Little Mexico and follow-on Cancun.

After Cancun another Mexican operation Mi Tierra set up shop in the building, and lasted about a year. (And you should visit both of those closing links because the previous comments and pictures for Wata Wing are spread out between them).

After Mi Tierra closed, there were indications fairly early on that the place was to become a Wata Wing chicken wing operation. The setup seemed quite protracted, and with the stall out of the Wata Wing roll-out in the old Taco Bell on Knox Abbott:

combined with reports of some legal difficulties the chain (which I should stress is probably totally different people in different areas) was facing in Maryland, it seemed for a time that this location might not open.

In the event it did open some time between 3 November 2010 and 1 December 2010 when commenter Badger stopped by.

I had thought, given this sign:

that the operation might be headed in a Hooters, Wing House direction with the "Wata Girls" front and center, but that seems not to have been the case.

If this location is closed (and it certainly seems to be), then that would throw into question the opening of a Wata Wing in the old Shoney's/Santa Fe/Savannah's location on Two Notch Road:

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This building, on Two Notch Road, next to the former Hi Line Imports, and more or less across the street from the former Ranch Restaurant, had a definite Huddle House look to it, but I couldn't ever remember actually having seen a Huddle House there. Some research in old city directories at the library showed that 4967 Two Notch Road did not exist as a street address prior to this building being built, and that it was in fact built as a Huddle House.

The ad is from the February 1990 Bellsouth phonebook, and the restaurant did not last long beyond that, being gone by the February 1992 directory. As far as I can tell, there were never two Huddle House restaurants open in Columbia at the same time, and shortly after this one closed, the one at 3801 Rosewood Drive began listing in the phonebook. That could mean either that this one relocated, that the chain was only issuing one franchaise for Columbia at a time, or it could simply be a coincidence.

Today the building is Auto Image, where summer lasts all year.

UPDATE 17 August 2023 -- Update tags, add map icon.

This little building sits more or less on the Northeast corner of Beltline Boulevard and Forest Drive, across from the Walgreen's. As commenter Dennis pointed out when he noted this closing, it is sort of turned backwards in that the side of the building which faces Beltline has very little signage. Given that all the parking is in the back, locating the "front" signage back there may have made sense to the designer, but it's bad for business as folks driving by on Beltline have very little way to tell what businesses are located here. In fact, I did not realize there was a Subway here for quite a while.

Any time a business, especially a restaurant, puts up a note that they are closed "temporarily", it is a very bad sign. Of course there are times when it's necessary, such as for a serious illness (which I certainly hope has not happened here), but in general once a bad situation is exacerbated by adding "no money coming in" to whatever problem existed, these temporary closings tend to become final. In fact, this happened in this very building in the case of Bruster's Real Ice Cream.

(Hat tip to commenter Dennis)

UPDATE 16 April 2011 -- Well, it did re-open. Good for them!

UPDATE 8 March 2012 -- The sign on the side facing Beltline has been replaced, but I'm hard pressed to find any differences between the new one and the old one..

UPDATE 2 March 2020 -- This has closed temporarily on several occasions since I first listed it. It is now closed for good:

UPDATE 17 June 2022: UPdating tags.

When I was in high school, a new radio station came to town, with a new concept: "Album Rock".

The station was WZLD (or "Z-96") and operated out of Cayce, first from a little storefront (apparently now vacant) to the left of a barber shop on State Street, and later from an odd looking building out on Airport Boulevard (at least I think that's where I remember seeing the sign).

I'll admit that the concept of "album rock" confused me a bit. I had only discovered rock music in 1976, and I was still a little iffy about all the definitions. For instance, I thought "acid rock" was the same thing as "heavy metal" since the only acid I had heard about was sulphuric, and I could imagine heavy metal dissolving stuff in the same way.

So, to make a full confession, I kind of took the promos about how "we play album cuts, not just singles" to heart and was deeply disappointed that they were not playing tracks from my then current favorite album, Billy Joel's "The Stranger". In fact, I went so far as to write them a deeply embarassing post card (in retrospect..) complaining that they were playing Van Morrison's "Wavelength" which was a Top-40 hit, and not "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant". I'm sure the DJs had a good laugh at it, and I've come to the point where I'm a huge Van Morrison fan nowdays (he can be very inconsistent in shows, but tore up the place in Atlanta last May..)

From what I've been able to gather from looking at old phonebooks down at the library, WZLD first showed up in the December 1974 Southern Bell phonebook. I don't think they were "album rock" at that time, or at least I didn't hear of them as such until later, but they were already at 1303 State Street, and already had their long-running phone numbers of 796-8896 business and 796-9996 for the contest line.

In the Janurary 1983 phonebook, their address changed to 2334 Airport Boulevard, and in the Jan 1984 phonebook, they took out their first yellow pages ad which rebranded them as "Number 1 Hit -- Kicker". Now, that phrase, "hit-kicker" is very similar to a non-radio-friendly phrase sometimes used to describe Country music, so I'm wondering if they underwent a change to a Country format at that time. I was still living in town at the time, but I don't think I was listening to them very much, and have no memory of it one way or another.

At any rate that catch phrase didn't last very long, and the yellow pages ad in the Feb 1985 phonebook described them as "Red Hot Radio 1". That also didn't last too long, and while the Feb 1988 phone book did not have a full ad, the tagline in their listing for that year was "All Hit".

They were not listed in the Jan 1989 phonebook and seem to have left the airwaves at that time.

Along the way, they did some memorable promos, with the most famous probably being the annual "Ramblin' Raft Race" on the Congaree. At this remove, sponsoring something like that seems as though it would be an insurance nightmare, but in those olden days, apparently encouraging tipsy people to navigate was OK..

Here's a few WZLD comments we've had here from time to time:

The one on Two Notch was indeed “The Zoom Flume”. I remember it well because they were a major sponsor at WZLD-FM where I worked. It’s heyday was the summer of 1979. We gave away free passes all the time. I think we tied it in with “The Ramblin’ Raft Race” on the Congaree River.

--Captain Dave

WZLD…. The ROCK… of the city.

The Ramblin’ Raft Race! I was going to BC when they had the first one of those (did they have more than one?).

I happened to be in study hall when a DJ and a guy from some raft rental company out of Atlanta came over looking for some kids to work for them. I signed up, and that was the hardest I think I’ve ever worked. We had to be there at 5:00am to blow up the rafts, rent them out, and then pack up and head down Old State to the pickup spot. Needless to say, the people getting out of the water didn’t resemble the folks we rented to at the put-in. I think we worked about 12 hours straight. Didn’t even get a lunch break!

Great times! (:

E.J.

UPDATE 2 July 2012 -- As mentioned in the comments, the A-frame looking building I have pictured above is not the Airport Boulevard location for WZLD. The correct building is next door, and I have finally gotten a picture of it:

UPDATE 27 September 2017 -- The Airport Boulevard building has now been razed and is a vacant lot:

UPDATE 17 November 2017 -- Commenter Rick sends in this picture of a picture showing a WZLD remote (circa 1981) at Roger's Car Stereo:

Rick identifies the fellow on the left, enthusiastic about being in a picture, as radio personality "Mountain Man", the young lady as another WZLD DJ, name unknown, the guy in the checked shirt a WZLD program manager or salesman and the third man unknown. Be warned, the click-through picture is not blurred.

This Piggly Wiggly was in the High Point Centre shopping center at the north-east corner of Lake Murray Boulevard and Columbiana Drive. As far as I can tell, it closed in 2009, and seems to have pretty well put-paid to the whole plaza in so doing. I rarely get over to Lake Murray Boulevard (as you can see here, I still haven't managed to make it to this Pig in the daytime..) so I don't know the market too well, but this closing seems a bit odd to me.

This is one of the newer, larger, Pigs, so it's not one of the tiny old stores that they are trying to transition out of, and there's certainly no lack of traffic in the Harbison area. In fact, this store sounds as though it were a flagship of sorts, at least this story from 2005 paints it as the store chosen to do the public launch for PW's new "Pay By Touch" system.

This LoopNet listing has a daytime picture of the store with Pig branding (and confirms that it was built in 1994, which still seems pretty recent to me).

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Update closing date to 2 Feb 2008 based on comments.

UPDATE 22 June 2021 -- Now a Stars & Strikes bowling and fun center:

Also adding map icon and updating tags.

I've always thought of Huddle House as a downmarket Waffle House, which is saying something, but it almost seems like the way Hardee's and Bantam Chef used to be related -- you saw the second in places that couldn't support the first. I'm pretty sure I've been in a Huddle at one time or another, but I have absolutely no reliable memory of such an occasion right now. I am sure I was never in this one which sits at the intersection of Rosewood Drive and Kilbourne Road.

The LoopNet listing suggests that the follow-on operation, one of Columbia's ubiquitous (but not apparently very lucrative) title pawn operations, has been closed at least since mid October 2010.

UPDATE 12 April 2012 -- It's now a Marco's Pizza:

UPDATE 17 August 2023 -- Update tags, add map icon.

I don't think I can actually remember this vacant showroom on Main Street being Hampton Pontiac Jaguar, but that's how it's in the EPA database and it clearly was a showroom of some sort.

One of the follow on operations, Ware We Customize was apparently automotive also.

In 1996 the building seems to have been the headquarters for Elliot Close's unsuccessful Senate bid against Strom Thurmond.

Currently it's looking pretty delapidated, and is flagged as unsafe, but apparently the property has been bought by some sort of religious organization and has been flagged as Hope Plaza Campus, so I would expect to see some repairs, or perhaps a tear-down and new building in the near future.

UPDATE 4 October 2016 -- This building has now been razed: