Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

This burned out body shop sits in an odd little area that I really knew nothing about. I noticed it the other week when I was getting onto I-77 West-bound from Garners Ferry Road. The area is rather industrial, with a transformer substation and nearby rail-spur, and must have been, I think, radically different before I-77 was pushed through. I'm saying "South Bolton Street" based on mapquest -- I couldn't actually see any name on the little spur leading from Planters Drive to this building, and if it's really a public street, it's a pretty forgotten one at least for any maintenance crews.

In particular, there's Veteran's Road and Old Veterans Road which must have been re-routed at that time. I also suspect that there was another road where the I-77 on-ramp is now that ran in front of the building, as the name is painted on the side which is not currently accessible by road. As for what that name is exactly, I can't say. I thought I could read it from the on-ramp, but I can't recall what I thought I saw, and the picture I took from there turned out quite poorly as far as being able to make out those letters. The "Body Shop" is clear enough, but for the first part I can only get "c-o-r-r-e-something-something".

I'm just guessing as to the time-frame for the closing. Certainly it's been long enough for the exposed interior to be pretty thoroughly tagged with graffitti.

UPDATE 28 March 2011: I've added the name "Correll's" based on the comments.

I've noticed this car care operation on the corner of Gervais and Barnwell Streets a number of times over the years, though I never stopped in. In particular I believe I used to drive by on my way to the dentist, and other times I would just wonder at the way businesses sometimes cluster, as Master was catty-cornered to an almost identical Firestone operation and just a few blocks from a Goodyear.

I really like the Jasper Transmissions plaque -- It has that late 50s, early 60s design esthetic that is really nicer than what you generally see now.

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Xtreme Customs was at the corner of Broad River Road and Briargate Circle, just across from the old location of Delhi Palace.

I'm not sure if this place closed or moved. There is a business of the same name listed in the phonebook as being in Lexington, but there are no "we've moved" signs on this location directing traffic there, so it may be another owner. I see their last promotion was 'HUG SAL'. Without seeing her, it's hard to know if $8.99 was reasonable or not..

Buck Cooper Motors is a right at the intersection where Two Notch and Shakespeare flat-iron into each other and is actually a tiny little lot for a used car place. I've noticed for a while now that there were no cars on the premises. I stopped by a couple of weeks ago, and there was a sign on the door to the effect that all cars had been moved to another Buck Cooper location. That sign seemed to be gone when I went back by today.

UPDATE 17 Feb 2011: Added Phillips 66 to the post title based on the comments.

UPDATE 9 April 2011 -- It's now Classic Auto, tinting and carwash:

National Tire & Battery (now a Tire Kingdom) was in this Columbia Mall outbuilding more or less behind the old Penny's location. I actually did go there once a few years ago when my car started really thinking about things before turning the starter over. I usually put Die Hards in my cars but for some reason or another I was not able to get served by Sears that day. I'm not building up to anything here -- it was perfectly acceptable service and a battery that lasted several years. (I've actually had much worse luck with alternators than batteries anyway). I guess I would have been hosed if I had needed to take advantage of the battery warranty as they closed fairly shortly thereafter, but in the event it wasn't an issue.

I don't believe the building was vacant long at all as Tire Kingdom moved in shortly thereafter. I find it a little amusing that this large, freestanding building has only a suite number, while all the little suites at The Shoppes at Meeting Place have full street numbers.

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:

Here's a vacant building I noticed driving I-20 westbound, and seems to have had a number of car-related operations in it over the years.

The name that comes up most often in google searches on 217 Plumbers Road is T O C Classic Cars & Trailer Sales (with some variations on the name). The name is always written with spaces between the 'T', 'O', & 'C', so presumably it stands for something, but I never saw it expanded. One of the google hits gave me their old URL, and I was able to find an archived version of their site from 2005 here, giving their mission as:

T.O.C. Classic specializes in restoring the 1967 to 1973 Camaro.

They were in the 2008 phonebook (printed Feb 2007) but not the 2009, so presumably they closed during 2008. Perhaps they fixed all the Camaros..

All I know about Summit Muscle Cars is that they took out an ad on the autabuy site which is still up, but which basically says nothing about the companay at all, though it does have a pretty cool flaming logo graphic.

Rock Hill Public Auto Auction is actually the first google hit for 217 Plumbers Road. The name makes its line of business pretty clear, though it is a bit mystifying why it was not in, you know, Rock Hill..

And finally Schroeder's Towing does not show up in google at all, despite still having a sign on the building window. Given that the whole lot is surrounded by a scary electric fence, my conjecture is that it was the most recent operation in the location and needed some deterrent to people attempting to untow their cars.

UPDATE 29 March 2014 -- It's now Berkeley Outdoors, which seems to be a boat store:

Carzzz is yet another vacant used car lot on Two Notch Road. The name makes me think of those rip-off movies you find in the cheap bin at Wal-Mart or at The Dollar Store where you're supposed to think you're getting a Disney movie, and instead it's some Eastern-European knockoff. Lightning McQueen it's not..

This building, on the northwest corner of Two Notch Road and Beltline Boulevard, was once, in the not too distant past, a Payless Shoe Source, despite striking me as a very odd location for such. In fact, the location is awkward for most uses as it is fairly hard to get into and out of.

The Carzzz web site is still online (and copyright 2010). It's interesting that the picture they use there does not have the old UK style telephone booth on the corner of the store sidewalk. I wonder what the story of that is? I have a dim memory that the nearby Chappy's Authentic English Fish & Chips may have had such a thing, but even if it that were true, I'm not sure how it would end up there.

UPDATE 23 December 2011 -- Work is ongoing here, but no indication of what is coming next:

I have some pictures of the sad fate of the British phonebooth I need to upload too.

UPDATE 10 January 2012 -- As mentioned, here are some pix of the demise of the phonebooth, from 1 October 2011:

UPDATE 25 January 2012 -- As reported by commenter Andrew, this is to be a dental clinic. In fact, as I was in the area yesterday, they were preparing to replace the banner type sign for Family Dental with a permanent sign -- something that was accomplished the next time I drove by (though I did not get a picture of it). With the opening of this clinic, the corner of Two Notch and Beltline will have two dental operations, as the old Eckerd on the opposite side of the street is now Small Smiles dental clinic.

UPDATE 28 January 2012 -- All the signage is up:

UPDATE 27 February 2019: Add tags and map icon.

For a while in the 1970s, we were a Mercury family: Mercury Comet to be exact. The first car of my father's that I can remember was some sort of 1950s Plymouth, very rounded -- and that's just about all I can remember about it. The first car of my mother's I remember was what I believe actually was her first car: A 1950s Willis.

I remember that one much better than the Plymouth since my father drove his to work while our mother dragged us everywhere in the WIllis. In particular I can recall that the Willis had a manual choke, a radio with tubes that took forever to warm up and never really worked right, and that when the rear floor fell out, my uncle replaced it with some sort of grate, and we could watch the road under the car as we rode along in the back seat.

When the Plymouth keeled over, my father bought our first Mercury Comet. It was an early 60s model, a white coupe with pseudo tail-fins, and he had aftermarket seat-belts installed, making it our first car with them. (Not that we ever used them). Then, when the Willis became a Willisn't, my mother got a late 60s or early 70s Comet coupe as well.

I don't remember too much negative about my father's Comet (and again, it was not the one we kids rode in much), but my mother's was a constant source of repair bills. We bought it at about the time Detroit was forgetting how to make cars in general, and three-on-the-tree cars in particular. They would still sell you one, of course, but Ford seemed to have no real idea how to build a clutch or manual transmission, and the dealer certainly had no idea how to fix one. Even leaving aside the transmission, the car had a host of issues like the radiator heat sensor that left us stranded on US-301 somewhere between here and Florida, and the cigarette lighter that almost set the car on fire despite the fact that nobody smoked. Add to that the whole "coupe" concept when trying to run a car pool, and admittedly, the unsightly mess of cables I added trying to compensate for the lack of a radio by jury-rigging a cassette player didn't help matters.

At some point my parents completely lost faith in the dealer (I don't think it was Stivers), and we started taking the cars to Bob Andrews on Harden Street, but in the end it was Mercury that converted us to a Toyota family.

Early this summer, Ford lost faith in Mercury as well, and announced that the brand would be phased out by the end of 2010. Interestingly, by then, Stivers had already lost the concession. This 2009 year end story from The State is a little vague on exactly what happened, but says that the Lincoln-Mercury concession was moving from Stivers to Classic Ford. However the article also says that the Stivers location would remain open, selling sell Mitsubishis and Subarus and was looking to add another brand as well. Apparently that didn't work out, and as of late September the mercury was falling and the whole corner lot was up for sale.

UPDATE 2 July 2011 -- Here are some night shots of the place from 24 October 2010:

UPDATE 22 June 2013 -- It's now an Enterprise Rent-A-Car:

Curiously enough, I wrote about this building just a few weeks ago in a post about Bill DuBose 66 Service Station.

At the time I used a number of pictures, including the first one above, of the current tenant, Keith's K & A Automotive to represent this stylish old building. Apparently almost immediately after I returned to town from my vacation, they experienced a fire and have had to shut down temporarily. I drive by there at least every other day, and from the level of activity I have seen there, they are working to make repairs sooner rather than later.

UPDATE 19 Jan 2011 -- open again: