Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

I've written about this building before, when it was a D's Wings. Since then, a Tex-Mex operation called Baja's Southwestern Grill has moved in -- and out. I was going to give them a try sometime, but in the event never got around to it until it was too late, and the restaurant curse on this building (and Saint Andrews Road in general) continues.

I think something fairly easy the owner could do to make the site viable would be to connect the parking lot to that of the gas station next door. That would give people exiting this site access to a traffic light so that left turns to get back on I-26 wouldn't be so bad. It seems like an obvious idea, so perhaps the station owners don't want the extra traffic.

Good on the owner for the forthright and informative closing door-note!

Hat tip to commenter Ken for the heads-up that Baja's was gone.

This building on the corner of Forest Drive & Trenholm Road was a Gulf station during my childhood, and indeed well into my driving days. I believe it was officially identified by the owner's name (which I cannot now recall) but to us, it was just the Gulf station, or even the filling station, as it was the one where we most often filled our cars.

During most of this time, it was a full-service gas station which meant that when you pulled in, you would trip a compressed air bell by driving over the hose and a guy would walk out to take care of you. Not only would he fill your tank with Good Gulf, but would open the hood, check the oil, open the cells on the battery filling each with water if needed, check the anti-freeze and windshield wiper levels and at least eyeball your tires.

In addition to gas, this station also had a mechanic on duty and two lift bays where he could change fan-belts, hoses, thermostats, oil, headlights and the like. Over the years, we had many minor repairs done on our cars here (for more major work, we went to the dealer or Bob Andrews).

The area behind the station is very spacious, moreso than makes sense now, but during a lot of this time, Bell's Drive-In was back there in a building that is now completely gone.

The old air stations are still there (though inoperative), and always fascinated me as a kid. There was some sort of crank the attendant would work to bring up a specific PSI number on the (entirely mechanical) "display", then he would put the hose to the tire, and the machine would make a very memorable "ding" as each pound of air went in.

I'm a little fuzzy on all the details now, but the place changed character in a number of stages. First I think the mechanic went, with a drive-through carwash replacing one of the service bays then the Gulf brand went away after it was bought out by BP, then most of the Columbia BPs were changed to Union 76s. I believe that by the time it became a Union 76, it was already operating in convenience store mode with the gas totally self-service. Though the Union 76 signage is much more prominent, the store itself is a Circle-K. For some reason, they never did reclaim the space from the carwash / second service bay for interior space -- I suppose it's storage now. The building itself is still largely unchanged and if the light is right, and you stand at the right angle, you can still see the painted over Gulf logo on the outside wall above and to the left of the front door.

UPDATE 6 Oct 2010 -- Apparently they have dropped the Union 76 affiliation:

UPDATE 19 July 2011: The building is gone! See the Circle K closing for pix.

The original location of Pier 1 Imports, or at least the first one that I recall was in the back of the Cedar Terrace shopping center on Garner's Ferry Road, in the space now occupied by a Fred's.

My mother was into "quirky", and interested in other cultures, so we often stopped at Pier 1 if we were in the area. The way I recall it, the store ran heavily to wicker, rattan, and exotic umbrella baskets. As a kid, I cared vary little for the furnishing aspects of the place, but was fascinated by the offbeat food items and cheap import toys. I remember in particular some sort of (Japanese?) candy squares that were wrapped in rice paper, and you ate them paper and all(!). We actually got some of those, but my I could only look in horrid fascination at the chocolate covered ants, which we never did get. I don't remember most of the toys, but I did get a harmonica there once, which was made in China (an actual communist country!) and seemed impossibly exotic with a colorful embossed box, and instructions printed on transparent paper in characters that weren't even in the alphabet, much less in English. I've still got the harmonica and box though the instructions seem to have vanished at some point -- I never did learn to play it..

I think Pier 1 moved to Two Notch in front of Columbia Mall after that, though for some reason we never went there. I think I read somewhere that the chain had fallen on hard times and rethought their concept. I don't believe there's one in town at all now, though I'm sure you could find chocolate covered ants somewhere.

UPDATE 19 May 2009:

OK, the consensus in the comments is that I had the Cedar Terrace location of Pier 1 wrong, and rather than being in what is now Fred's, it was in what is now Sub Station II & Steve-O's, so here's a picture of that storefront:

And as long as I'm posting a picture of it, I'll give you my Sub Station II story, even though it hasn't closed. At some point in the 80s or 90s, I went to lunch with my sister, and as she lived fairly near to Garner's Ferry at the time, we ended up in Cedar Terrace at Sub Station II. As it happened, I wasn't really in the mood for a cold sub, and I saw on their behind-the-counter menu board "Italian Sausage Sandwich with Peppers & Onions". I thought Hey! I love those at the State Fair, and I never get to have one anywhere else., so I ordered it.

I should perhaps have been apprehensive as there was no indication of a griddle anywhere, but we went to our table and chit-chatted a bit. I noticed though that the counter person seemed to be dipping something out of a pot behind the counter. A few minutes later our order was called and I found my sandwich to be two soggy boiled links placed in a bun with no condiments of any kind. Great. Well, the sausage was obviously going to be what it was, but Hey, I asked the counter person, where are my peppers & onions?

Oh, that's just what's written on the sign. We haven't had those in years

While I'm updating the post, I should also note I was wrong about there being no Pier 1s in town. There is actually one quite close to the old Garners ferry location at the Woodhill Target complex:

UPDATE 30 June 2020: Updating tags, adding map icon.

I don't eat at Lizard's Thicket that often, but it's good Southern comfort food. I recall working in Kansas for about a month once, and being so glad when I got back, drove out of the airport here and saw the Liz on Airport Boulevard. There are times when only field-peas-over-rice will do.

Someone described Lizard's Thicket here in the comments of some post or another as a "hermit crab restaurant", ie: one that likes to let another restaurant build the building and fail and then moves into the empty shell. It strikes me as a sound strategy, but that being the case, I can't speak to what was in this building before Liz. This particular store was a bit unusual in that it was one of the two Lizes closest together of all those I am aware of (the other is just a mile or so down Two Notch towards Spring Valley). It was also the closest Liz to our house, and the one we went to most often. I remember two things in particular about it. First, they had a pot-plant by the register which was connected to a lamp. Through some sort of capacitance effect, if you touched the leaves of the plant, the lamp would turn on, cycle through dim, normal and bright and then off again. Second, once when we were eating there, the waitress subtracted the cost of our drinks from the bill rather than adding it. I've had days like that..

The building sat empty for a bit after Liz left (to go down to a new location [and building!] near Sandhill) and then the current tenant moved in. From the amount of time it was taking, and the car I often saw parked there, my impression was that the new owner was doing most of the work him(?)-self. I think too, that when it first opened, the "Korean" rubric had not been added. I haven't eaten there, but it seems to draw a good lunch crowd. I doubt there's peas-over-rice though.

UPDATE 17 June 2025: Updating tags and adding map icon.

Woodhill Mall was another of Columbia's hard luck malls. There were three of them which fell on hard times more or less together: Decker Mall, Bush River Mall and Woodhill Mall. Decker and Bush River were obviously "sister" malls, with similar designs, and both anchored by a Kroger on one end and a Richway on the other.

Woodhill had a different design and store mix though it did include a Richway as well. If I recall correctly, the layout of Woodhill Mall was basically a 'T' shape. If you stood on Garners Ferry road and looked down onto the mall, the 'T' would be laid on its side rotated 90-degrees, such that the crossbar would be perpendicular to Garners Ferry, and the "leg" would extend out to the left.

The anchor store at the top (nearest to Garners Ferry) of the crossbar was Tapp's, a local stalwart which was headquartered downtown, but which also had large stores at Dutch Square and Woodhill (and a small Tapp's Twig store at Trenholm Plaza). Continuing down the crossbar, were a number of stores that I can't recall, but also a book store, and a record store.

Where the crossbar hit the leg, there was a mini food court. I'm pretty sure there was a Chik-Fil-A there, and a small sandwich & burger shop which made The State's list of best burgers in town in the late 1980s. (I want to say it was called "Jonathans", but I'm not sure). If you continued down the leg towards Richway there was a video arcade, though it was never as good as some of the others in town.

It's hard to say exactly why these things happen, but for some reason, Woodhill Mall always failed to thrive. I suppose the closing of Tapp's was a big blow, but it was clear for years that the place was going downhill -- it was never unsafe or anything like that, but stores would close and not be replaced, or be replaced by one-off local stores which had no reasonable hope of surviving.

One thing that the mall did have going for it, for some reason, was it's Santa. Apparently a good number of people considered him superior to the other mall Santa's, for reasons which escape me now, but while that's nice, it's not enough to save a mall. At some point, the managers decided to embrace whatever would bring in a few dollars, and the whole back side of the mall was converted from retail to "self storage". They also opened a major recycling center behind the mall.

In the end, the only thing the mall had going for it was the remaining anchor (Richway which converted to Gold Star which converted to Target), and that wasn't enough.

I think it was early in the 2000s when I was in town and decided to take some old magazines and papers from my father's to recycle. I drove out to Woodhill Mall and found it totally gone! I was shocked, but not on reflection surprised.

Since then, the property has been redeveloped into an two upscale strips. The Target (it came back) strip apparently called just Woodhill, and a strip at the top of the old mall parking lot (against Garners Ferry) called The Shoppes at Woodhill.

I believe at this point, only the building with Hampton Hill and the old automated post office are left from the buildings of the original mall complex.

I'm not sure I can ever remember Guignard Bricks actually being in operation, but the circular kilns of the defunct brickworks have been a Cayce landmark all of my life.

I was interested then when I noticed the the land around the old works is being cleared, and that new roads are being driven into it, so I parked across the street and hiked in. It was late afternoon, and the light angling in from the west made for perfect picture taking. I've made myself jetison most of the shots, but there are still an awful lot after the jump.

I'm sure the yard was much more extensive during operation, but what is left is a row of the domed, circular brick kilns, the tram tracks connecting them, and across a brick (presumably Guignard brick) plaza, an operations building of some sort (also presumably of Guignard bricks). The work permit on the building indicates that all the work is for an expansion of the adjacent condos, and I'm hopeful that they will be mindful of the history of the place and leave these old structures in place for the residents to enjoy.

All of the kilns except one are empty, but the exception seems to have an awfully lot of odd items in it. I'd particularly like to know the story behind the scooter that figures prominently in several shots!

Read the rest of this entry »

For a caveman appetite

Honestly I have no memory of this place at all, and I was quite surprised to find it as I went through the 1970 Bellsouth restaurant section. I like cartoons more than most, and it seems to me that something like this would have been near the top of my radar when I was 9. I was certainly aware of Yogi Bear's Honey Fried Chicken even though I didn't like chicken at all. That's certainly an official Hanna-Barbera rendition of Fred on the ad, not some chintzy knock-off, so I assume that this must have been part of a chain that could negotiate for national level properties...

I rather doubt though, that the current 532 Knox Abbot Drive is the building where Flintstones was. The ad namechecks "Ravenwood Shopping Center", which I have no memory of, and this building, though it looks like it could go back as far as the 70s is obviously not a restaurant location.

Yabba Dabba Do!

I've written about Pizza Inn before, and since we lived in Forest Acres, that Two Notch store is where I would encounter the chain while I was in Columbia. For a while in the 1980s and 1990s, I lived in Fayetteville NC, and our office would often do a general lunch at the one near the main mall there as well. This one, on 12th Street in West Columbia is one I never ate at, and sometime in the early 2000s, I think, the building was knocked down and re-built as a Pitt Stop gas station.

With the passing of this place, and of Pizza Hut on Knox Abbot Drive, I think that Tony's on Knox Abbot is about the only pizza option left in West Columbia / Cayce.

OK, this one is very vague. Hopefully someone will recall more details than this, but at one time this lot (now housing an ATM drive-through) on "B" Avenue in Triangle City West Columbia (up the hill from Zesto) had a WWII-surplus Quonset Hut standing on it.

We only went there a couple of times that I can recall since few of my mother's shopping destinations were in the area (perhaps we had gone to The Factory Outlet on 12th Street..), but the place was some sort of surplus store with all kinds of junk. It was sort of a combination of Big Lots and The Dollar Store, but it was definitely a local, one-off, operation. I have the feeling that it may have been un-airconditioned, with noisy fans running in the rear, but I might be mixing that up with some of the used-furniture stores we used to go to. To the best of my recollection, we never bought anything there, but it was definitely an interesting experience to go through the stock.

Anybody else remember this place?

I noticed this defunct building / strip mall on Sunset Boulevard recently when I stopped to take some pictures of the old Quincy's building next door.

Of the three businesses that google suggests were here, I can only sort of recall hearing about or perhaps seeing Pizza House. At one point back in the 90s, I went on a quest for Columbia's best pizza and hit a large number of pizza restaurants, but never this one. At this remove I'm not sure why. It could be the distance, but during that time, I did try the nearby Grecian Gardens for pizza, so I doubt that was it. It could be that it was one of those places where you order at the counter rather than at your table -- I try to avoid those. Or perhaps it looked decrepit even back then.

The other two businesses I'm fairly sure I never heard of. Debbie's Plants seems like a fairly self-explanatory name, but not one that would attract me, and the medical facility seems to have either been eldercare or mental health care or perhaps both.

I see that the whole complex is for sale. It looks like it would take fairly extensive work to make it look decent again -- it wouldn't surprise me if whoever buys it just knocks everything down.

UPDATE 11 April 2010: Added 1977 Bellsouth yellow page ad.

UPDATE 18 October 2012 -- As I speculated above, the whole place was knocked down some time ago. I have a more extensive set of pictures (though taken on a much less sunny day) somewhere, but for now these from 19 February 2011 tell the story:

UPDATE 13 February 2017 -- This strip is now Salsaritas and Starbucks: