Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

The only time I ever ate at a Steak & Ale was in Tampa Florida in the late 1980s. We were setting up a new office in Tampa at the time, and I had been seconded from the Fayetteville office to work on the software infrastructure down there. In the event, I ended up spending quite a bit of time in Tampa, but never really got to see much of the city because we were working such late hours.

At any rate, most of the team working on the office startup would eat together every night, and one night I was dead tired and just wanted something simple and to go to bed. I recalled seeing what I took to be a Western Sizzling type steakhouse down the road, so during the usual "where do you want to go/I dunno, where do *you* want to go" scrimmage, I just piped up and said: "Steak and Ale". I figured there would be burgers and a salad bar and apparently beer so the guys who wanted a drink could get one. Well, it turned out to be a little fancier than a Western Sizzling. In fact it turned out to be a lot fancier, and I found to my regret that I couldn't get a burger at all. (In those rare situations, I can usually get a baked potato & French Onion soup -- my "too fancy" fallbacks).

I never went back to that Steak & Ale, and it fostered no desire in me to go to the one in Columbia. Nonetheless, it had always seemed something of an institution to me, and I was quite surprised when they closed up shop a few years ago. After they left, there was a very short-lived operation called Buster's Bistro (which I also never visited) in the building, and now the place is split between some kind of furniture shop and some sort of athletic shop.

It looks like the chain is still around, but the closest one is in Greenville.

UPDATE 25 June 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 13 Oct 2010: Added yellow pages ad from the 1975-1976 Southern Bell phonebook.

UPDATE 16 June 2022: Adding tags and map icon.

At one time, downtown had a lot of pawn shops. I seem to recall several on Assembly Street. There are fewer nowdays. Some of them got re-developed, and I think some of them got out-competed by shops in more logical places like Decker Boulevard. I never went into one until I was in my 40s. Though I can't recall either of my parents ever saying anything against pawn shops, I just always had the feeling growing up that they were sort of places of ill-repute. Perhaps that's because the classic n'er-do-well Andy Capp was the only character I associated with the shops.

I believe this shop on Main closed at about the same time as the Capitol Restaurant and that First Citizen's is supposed to do something with the property someday. Maybe they'll open it back up. I should think pawn-shopery is a lot less risky than mortgage lending..

UPDATE 4 May 2010: Added full street address to post title.

Once upon a time, housewives stayed home and did the grocery shopping. That was the theory anyway, and it had a good bit of reality behind it for many years. One of the corellaries to this theorem was the assumption that houswives would have time to fool with trading stamps.

Trading stamps are one of those things that is hard to explain because it just sounds ridiculous:

You mean they had these rube-goldberg machines with hundreds of round buttons sitting on top of the cash registers, and when you bought something, the clerk punched in numbers and the machine spat out a bunch of stamps!!??

But the machines were there, and you did take the stamps home and paste them into books. And when you got enough books, you could take them to the redemption center and exchange them for various household items...

There were several different, competing, brands of trading stamps. The name I can always remember is Greenbax (a week pun on the idea that "greenbacks" are dollars, and that you got something back "bax" from the stamps), but each grocery chain had their particular affiliation. I'm pretty sure that this building, at the base of Gervais Street (near the Trenholm intersection) was the Greenbax Redemption center. (It was definitely the redemption center for some trading stamp line). I can only remember going there once (it took a long time to get enough books for anything desirable), and I can't remember what we got, but my impression is that the shelves were not packed and the place was not crowded.

At some point in the 70s, things changed. For one thing, more women were working, and not willing to put up with spending hours pasting stamps into books. For another, several grocery chains decided to give customers a break by, you know, having lower prices rather than pie-in-the-sky redemption offers. Trading stamps were the old version of the modern rebate scam. Companies love rebates since it lets them offer what sounds like a killer deal, but they know half the customers will forget to fill out the paperwork and they will never have to make good on it. Trading stamps were the same thing. The store seemed like it was giving you something extra, but they knew most people would forget about the stamps.

I see that Greenbax is still around as some kind of Pig loyalty program, but in general trading stamps had all died off by the 80s. I don't know what the Greenbax building had been before that -- It looks rather like an old A&P, but I don't think it was one. At any rate, it seems to have found new stable tenants since then. I think the current mix has been there for at least ten years.

UPDATE 13 Jan 2010: Added full street address to post title.
Also, the followup operation Columbia Paint & Decorating has closed.

I believe I stopped at this Coldstone twice, having ice cream once, and a milkshake once. Both times, it seemed to me that they were doing a good business. I noticed the other day, however, when I was taking pictures of the nearby former Za's location that they are now closed. I've put down 2007 for the closing date since they aren't listed in the 2008 Bellsouth phonebook, but it could have been 2006 I suppose.

When both Bruster's and Coldstone closed in Forest Acres, my thinking was that Bruster's had a bad location and business model, but I was puzzled by Coldstone, which seemingly had a good spot by Starbucks in a high foot-traffic area of Trenholm Plaza. Seeing the Clemson Road Coldstone closed got me thinking there might be something up with the chain itself, and lo-and-behold, I ran across an interesting Wall Street Journal article to exactly that effect last night. It seems that Coldstone franchisees must pay back to corporate on gross sales, and that they have to use suppliers with very high markups:

Even as they rave about the quality of the ice cream, numerous franchisees say the numbers in Cold Stone's business model didn't add up. The cost of running one of the shops was so steep that making a profit was daunting, especially in an economy where a $4 scoop was a pricey indulgence, they argue. They also contend the company cut their margins even further by offering two-for-one coupons and making them buy costly ingredients from a single supplier. Some argue that the company's rapid expansion crowded stores too close together -- and brought in too many inexperienced franchisees.

To quote from an even more interesting followup comment by a disgruntled Coldstone franchisee:

Another issue is Cold Stone’s agreements to receive kickbacks from the companies that it requires franchisees to use. This is over and above the 9% that they charge franchisees based on gross sales. These agreements drive up food costs for franchisees and forces them out of business. As an example, I recently purchased 24-24oz. Pepsi bottles from Sam’s Club for $14.21. Yet as a franchisee, I was required to buy 20oz. bottles directly from the distributor. I believe I was paying $21.65 for 20-20oz bottles of the very same product. Therefore I was paying more than $7 more for product from the distributor and receiving 96 less ounces. Shouldn’t a franchisor negotiating on behalf of nearly 1,400 franchisees be able to negotiate a better price than I can get walking into my local wholesaler?

There are some very sad stories at the second link. I do get snarky on this blog, but every failed store was someone's dream.

UPDATE 21 April 2010: Added full street address to post title.

UPDATE 28 April 2010 -- It's now a Subway:

The Capitol Restaurant was supposedly where all the wheeler-dealers from the General Assembly hung out while cutting deals. I don't know how much truth there was to that -- it's certainly within easy walking distance of the State House, but when I would look in while in the area, the interior and patrons didn't scream power players! to me.

I say "look in" because this is another of the large number of closed restaurants in Columbia that were always on "my list" and which I would visit "someday". The nearby Frog & Brassiere was another.

Supposedly First Citizen's was going to do something with the building, but they don't seem in any hury.

UPDATE 2 November 2009: Added street address to post title.

UPDATE 24 February 2013: I have added as the first picture on this post one taken by commenter Thomas in 1997. It shows Capitol Restaurant in operation, and also Capitol Newsstand (and the now vanished building that was once between them). Thanks!

UPDATE 14 November 2013 -- After extensive remodeling, this space is open again as First Citizens Cafe:

Well, this one is still open, but it's going soon!

I've always thought of The Sharper Image as sort of a store for people who have too much money (which doesn't mean I haven't lusted after some of their tecno-porn myself!). Given however, that their entire stock is 'nonessentials', I suppose it's not surprising that they would be hurting in an economic downturn.

I'm starting to wonder a bit about Sandhills itself. This is the third Sandhills closing I've blogged, and the place isn't that old. There also seem to be a lot of never-occupied storefronts out there. Now they still well be ramping up, and the place doesn't seem to lack for shoppers, but it makes me wonder..

UPDATE 16 May 2010: Added full stree address,tags.

UPDATE: Commenter Mike has credible, event-tied memories that place the closing no earlier than 2006, not the 2003/2004 I mention below. I've updated the post title to say 2006.

The original Za's in Shandon is a nice place. It has an improbably attractive waitstaff, which is also very attentive: a rare and prized combination. The pizza is also quite good. They have had calamata olives for years when it was very rare to find them on menus, and the sauce is quite tasty as well. As a glutton for pizza, I can quibble that their pizzas at 8" are a bit small, but that's minor. With the closing of The Parthenon, Za's is definitely in the running for Best Pizza in Columbia though I consider that that category has no clear winner at present.

I also like that they are a restaurant that is serious about staying open for their posted hours. You can get full cheerful service if you walk in 20 min before closing, and besides that, they are one of the few nice places in town which stays open until 11pm on Thursday night.

Considering all that, I was very interested when Za's opened a second store on Clemson Road (at Sparkleberry). If I was out and about on the Interstate, it promised to be much easier to drop by there than wend my way into Shandon. In the event, I believe I made it there two or three times. The food seemed about as good as the original location, but I thought the wait-staff was both a mite less attractive and a mite less attentive. The first is nice, but not really important. The second is.

The last time I tried to go was for lunch on a Mother's Day. I'm not really sure what year it was, I'm gonna say 2003, but it could have been 2004. At any rate, there was a sign on the door saying "Closed for Mother's Day", which struck me as extremely odd, since Mother's Day is a big deal for most restaurants. Since they were closed and shuttered the next time I went by, I concluded that the sign was a bit disingenuous as such signs often are (for instance Bruster's and Coldstone's).

I don't know exactly why things didn't work out for them, but that particular plaza on Clemson has seen a number of high profile businesses come and go. Perhaps the traffic they anticipated would pass by on the way to the Village at Sandhills has not been quite to expectations.

Oh well. At any rate, the original Za's still seems to be going strong so I can still get my late-night fix on Thursdays. Not sure if they have "Martini Monday" or "Wine Wednesday" though.

UPDATE 21 April 2010: Added full street address to post title.

I went ahead and bit the bullet this weekend to do the upgrade from WordPress 2.3.1 to WordPress 2.5.1. Supposedly it has some security fixes, and I'm hoping it will be easier to manage comment-spam. There were a few moments of panic when I could no longer log in, but hopefully that's behind me now.

While I was at it, I decided I might as well try a new theme. Unless Ihave decided to revert by the time you read this, I am using "Siverlight" by "Bob" now. I'm not totally sold on it yet, but it seems to display the pictures better. You can still click for the larger pictures, but the picture you click on is itself rendered a bit larger. It also shows the most recent comments in the right sidebar. It's not as clean as the old "default" theme, and it seems to me the post text may be a bit small, but I think I'll give it a few days at least.

This building, which Harbor Inn has just vacated was originally a Ryan's steakhouse. A friend who writes software for the restaurant industry told me once that Ryan's corporate felt that the local franchises had run the brand into the ground and had introduced a new name Fire Mountain (which was once out on Garner's Ferry) for markets where the Ryan's name had been ruined. Be that as it may, my recollection is that when this Ryan's closed, it was not to move out towards Sandhills where there is a Ryans today, but that Columbia was Ryans-less for a few years.

At any rate, Harbor Inn took over the building and had a fairly good run there. I'm not sure why they decided to move to the old Quincy's building near Lowes on Two Notch, but I did get the impression after stopping to take these pictures that the Quincy's location is easier to get in and out of. And, of course, it's nearer to the Interstate as well.

I wondered if Columbia could support a store like this, and unless they have just moved somewhere else, I guess the answer is no: Even a non-profit store has to pay rent & utilities.

If I understand the concept, Ten Thousand Villages was to sell crafts from third world countries with more of the selling price making its way back there than is the usual case. That's a nice idea, but people still have to buy them. Walking by there from time to time on my way to CVS, I would see things that, while I could appreciate the skill and craftsmanship that went into them, I really didn't have any desire to put in my house. Of course I'm the sort who thinks you can never have too many pictures of the beach on your walls, so take that for what it's worth.

Too bad.

UPDATE 4 March 2010: Added full street address and precise closing date (from this link) to post title.