Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

As I was taking one of the pictures for the Circuit City post, I found myself standing in front of a little store called Serendipity that I had never noticed before. I had no idea what it was, but looking in the windows (which works better in person than with my camera..) quickly established that it had been a florist shop and probably a rather interesting one. It just goes to show how even a medium sized place like Columbia has much more stuff than I can keep track of. Apparently a fair sized parcel goes with the shop, and it will be interesting to see what happens with the land.

UPDATE 21 May 2009: Looks like it's open again as a florist Forget-Me-Not:

One thing to remember about Two Notch Road is that is is also US Highway-1, and that at one time that meant a good bit. Back before Interstates, US-1 carried a lot of the national North/South traffic, and many of those travellers needed some place to sleep. For them, Columbia seemed like a logical place to stop, and Two Notch Road still has a number of the motels that were built for them to park their cars and rest their heads.

It doesn't still have them all, of course. I remember two in particular that are now gone. Dreamland Motel once stood where the Lowes on Two Notch now stands. Since we lived in town, we never stayed there of course, but after long-haul traffic on US-1 started dying down, they decided to earn some some extra money (or perhaps it was just goodwill) by having Red-Cross approved swimming lessons taught in the summer at their pool. I figure that between there and the pool at my cousins' country club, I must have taken Red Cross "Advanced Beginners" four times. My mother would drop my sister and me off at Dreamland for the lesson and go run errands. At least she did the first time, but it developed that for some reason my sister completely refused to get in the pool (and she was a stubborn kid) so I may have finished the lessons there alone. After that, the place was torn down to put up the Spring Valley Theaters. The other motel I recall was the Chat 'n' Rest at the corner of Two Notch and Forest Drive at Providence Hospital. We never had swim lessons there, and in fact never set foot on the property, but I always used to think, riding by, how friendly the name sounded. You might almost imagine the place had a screen porch with rockers.

There are a number of these US-1 motels still hanging in on Two Notch, and I'm sure they are all perfectly legitimate places and I'm not at all saying anything libelous about them. However, as the US-1 traffic died off, and as newer motels were built at all the Interstate exits, you started to read things in the paper and observe things driving down Two Notch at night that might lead you to believe that some of the motels on Two Notch might perhaps rent their rooms on a basis more hourly than daily, and I'm afraid to say that it's in my mind that The Thoroughbred Motel might have been one of those. Whatever the basis of its operation, it finally folded a few years ago, and I can't imagine that whoever buys the property will leave it standing, classic sheetmetal horseheads or no.

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comments. I was wrong and Throughbred was an absolutely legit, family, place!

my grandmother was very proud to run a family motel she would not tolerlate the “working girl’s” walking on her parking lot or let them use her Motel and would chase them across the street

UPDATE 28 Feb 09:

Well, lots of changes here. First, on 29 Jan 2009, we see the place marked off with danger tape:

(By the way -- Note the horse-theme wallpaper inside the office!)

Then on 13 Feb 2009, demolition is well underway:

Finally by 25 Feb 2009 (when I got back into town after a trip), the whole place is gone:

UPDATE 31 March 2009: Added the Yellow Pages ad from the 1970 Southern Bell phonebook.

I noticed the other day that this Food Lion on Taylor Street just above Two Notch is closed. I know that Benedict has been doing a lot the last few years to try and upgrade the area a bit (the new sports stadium on Two Notch being the biggest part of this), and it's unclear (to me) if this closing reflects a success or failure. The sign in the window is a bit ambiguous, but it seems to tilt towards this being an upfit for this Food Lion location (and Food Lion has been doing some nice work remodelling their older stores). On the other hand, going businesses tend to bend over backwards to stay open during remodelling (I'm pretty sure the Pawleys Island Food Lion was open during the course of its remodelling), and there's no sign in the window to the effect of "Pardon our Progress!" or "Changing to Serve You Better!", so we'll see.

UPDATE 28 Jan 2010: The place is now "Allen University Mall", so not Benedict at all. Also, added the street address to the post title.

UPDATE 17 March 2010 -- Here's a picture after the remodel:

UPDATE 20 Oct 2010: Added "Store #719" to post title.

UPDATE 9 March 2011: Changed closing date based on discussion in the comments.

Red Wing Rollerway is on Decker Blvd adjoining and behind Zorba's and the old "Aloha/Los Alazanes" restaurant. I'll admit that I've never been inside. In fact, I haven't put on a pair of skates since about 1979, which wasn't too long after I finally figured out how they worked. We used to skate on the road at home, and I could figure out how to roll down the hill, but the actual "make progress on level ground" part of skating took me another decade to figure out. Timing-wise, I just missed the "skate-key" era on one side, and the roller-blade era on the other. (We seem to be into the "Wheelie" era now..)

You have to love the Red Wing sign. Yes, it could use a little maintanence, especially on the North side, but it really speaks to a vanished design aesthetic that I really like. If someone did one like that now, it would be self-conscious and "retro".

For now, it appears that the place is still open for business while it is for sale. While I was taking these pictures, I saw a pickup deliver some sort of arcade game or pinball machine, and several people were in and out the front doors. I hope that if someone does buy it, they keep it open. It's not like Decker needs another strip mall..

UPDATE 2 October 2008:

Well, it's official, Red Wing Rollerway is gone. I noticed the Sold sign last week and interior demolition is already underway.

I stopped by today, and the folks working on gutting the place were kind enough to let me go in (the first time I'd been inside) and take some pictures. They did not know what the building was going to be used for, but didn't think it would be torn down. It was kind of surreal seeing those two disco-balls sitting down on the floor like that. If you keep watch on the dumpsters you could probably latch on to one. I think somebody alread scored the skates pictured..

UPDATE 31 March 2009:

Well, the Redwing building is open again as KNC Trading one of those companies you see but that you're never sure exactly just what it is that they do. They've preserved about as much of the Redwing sign as we could reasonably expect (probably because since they don't do retail business, a spiffy new sign to lure customers is a useless expense).

UPDATE 13 July 2009: If you enjoyed this blog post, you may be interested that some of the images are available from the Columbia Closings web store.

UPDATE 10 August 2022: Adding map icon.

UPDATE 6 July 2026 -- Here is a video from commenter Robbie Jones, who says

Back in 2000, I helped create a short film called Couple Skate, filmed at the Red Wing Rollerway. The kids in the movie were all students from Ben Lippen elementary school. They made it into a field trip so we could film. The film is cute and nostalgic and captures the magic of skate nights from when I was a kid. I finally got around to posting it on YouTube. Enjoy!

:

Two Notch is an interesting road. Even though parts of it are pretty industrial or heavy retail, there are still all sorts of odd little residential areas and one-off businesses. The Plant Barn (on Spring Ct. ,in between Pinestraw Road and Arcadia Lakes Drive) was one of them.

I can't say much about The Plant Barn as I'm not much of a plant person. My mother was, and I think she went there sometimes, but she never took me (I certainly would not have volunteered). I do know that for years I saw the sign on Two Notch and thought "maybe I'll turn down that road someday", but never did while it was still in business. About ten years ago, they put a little note up on their sign to the effect that they appreciated everyone's business, but were closing down.

Spring Ct. is just a spur off of Two Notch and doesn't go through to anything, but I found the other interesting business there entirely by chance and from the other side. Growing up, since I never could seem to get to sleep at night, I was very aware of the train tracks that ran between Two Notch and Formosa Drive. Trains would come through late every night with a lot of click-clacking and horn blowing. Furthermore, the "cliff" the tracks ran by had the only cave I was ever aware of in the Columbia area. Years later, on a really nice Spring day, I decided to walk the tracks from Arcadia Lake Drive to Satchelford Road. It was an interesting experience, seeing the back side of everything, including a very odd set of buildings I couldn't figure out. It turns out there's a bait farm (Springdale Bait Farm) on Spring Ct, right off of Two Notch. Who knew?

Godfather's was in a little strip mall off of Parklane on the one side, and the Columbia Mall perimeter road on the other side. My memory says that the same building (I'm unsure if it were the same suite) was at one time home to Shakey's Pizza Parlor, the first pizza restaurant I can remember in Columbia at all.. I think I recall going to Shakey's once or twice. They must have had pizza, but all I can remember is that they were showing silent-movie comedies in the rear of the store (and I'm not even 100% I remember that -- I may be remembering something I heard later -- it was a long time ago).

Pizza was a fairly exotic dish when I was a kid. My first experience with pizza, if you could call it that, came at Satchelford Elementary School, where from time to time, the cafeteria food line featured "pizza pie". This was a pie shell filled with gound beef and topped with melted cheddar cheese and it distorted my perceptions of pizza for years just as their "submarine sandwich" (a rectangular cut piece of bologna and a piece of pre-sliced American cheese cut into two rectangles all in a hotdog bun) turned me off on "subs" for years.

Later we discovered Chef Boyardee's frozen cheeze pizza and pizza mix (he must know pizza, he's French!) which was actually a step up as was Pizza Hut (though I feel they have cheapened their brand).

By the time I became aware of Godfather's, I was pretty much a Pizza Hut snob, and the few times I ate there, I didn't like the pizza much at all (I don't think this was all callow youth, I had the same opinion years later in Myrtle Beach). Furthermore, if I recall correctly, Godfather's was one of those order-at-the-counter places and I have always preferred ordering from a menu at the table. Be that as it may, I don't know exactly how Godfather's got into trouble, but suddenly it seemed there were a lot fewer of them. I think the one at the beach outlasted this one, but it's gone now too. I did a web search and there are actually a few left in SC, but not in places I go.

If you look at the second picture, you'll see lots of plastic bins inside the former Godfather's. The labels didn't come out well in the picture, but they all say things like "leak #8". I take that to mean that on some very small level at least, someone still cares what happens to the building though it's been vacant so many years now that I don't see much future for a business there.

Unless someone makes them an offer they can't refuse.

UPDATE 30 July 2010: Added Shakey's to the post title as well as the full street address.

UPDATE Friday 13 May 2016: Add *correct* street address.

When Circuit City came to town, their first location (as I recall it anyway) was on Two Notch Road, by the first Columbia Mall entrance. I didn't go there very often because, in short, I had no money at the time. I also found that the salesmen, who worked on commission, were rather predatory, and it was hard to get a close look at anything without one swooping down. In the late 80s or maybe the early 90s, they changed their corporate direction to be a "big box" player, and moved out of their original store (which now houses Wes Bolick bedrooms) and around the corner, so to speak, into a large store at Capitol Centre.

By this time, I had a real job, and a little money, so I would go browsing a bit more often. They always seemed to have a lot of interesting electronics (and appliances, which didn't really seem to fit with the rest of their concept). I found that if I stayed away from the TVs and large stereo systems, I could generally look unmolested by staff, but that checkout was now a big pain. At one time, Radio Shack had the most annoying checkout experience in electronics retail, belying their supposed tech savy by writing everything down on a pad by hand and running a total with a calculator and then nosing about your phone number and address. After Radio Shack reformed, Circuit City seemed to take up some of their nosiness, and I recall on a day when I was in a bad mood anyway, and just wanted to pay cash for a $10 tape for data backup that I rebelled when they started digging for all my personal data, and ended up boycotting the chain for about 5 years.

In that interval, they fell upon hard times. I think part of it was the DIVX debacle. Back when it was clear that technology was advancing to the point that VHS would be obsolete and that the next medium for distributing movies to retail would be some sort of CD sized disc, there were two contenders. One of these was, of course, DVD, and the other was DIVX (which has nothing to do with the current video codec called DivX, btw). The difference between the two formats (from a consumer perspective) was that DVD was "forever" while DIVX discs could only be played for a limited time period before expiring (making each purchase essentially a rental). Circuit city backed DIVX in a big way, and apparently shaded the truth in a lot of their sales-floor pitch, earning a lot of consumer bad-will.

In the meantime, Best Buy was challenging them with even bigger stores and more tech choices, and they have never completely recovered. None of that, I suppose, has anything to do with the move of this particular store from Capitol Centre to their current location out on Two Notch near Sandhills -- that was just the combination of the decline of Capitol Centre and the general flight from the Columbia Mall/Decker Blvd area out towards the north-east. (Once again, we can see that it wasn't lack of parking that did it.. :-) I ended my boycot years ago, and have been in their new store a number of times. It seems to me that Best Buy is still better at computer stuff (though neither compares to the late, lamented CompUSA in that regard), but that Circuit City is better than it was. Certainly they seem to have done away with commissions and you can generally browse more comfortably now, and the last time I bought something, they didn't ask for my phone number at all.

Doing the post on Forest Lake Park made me think of Forest Lake TV.

Why? Because the original (as far as I know) location for Forest Lake TV was in the Forest Lake Shopping Center, directly across from the park:

You can still see the stenciling for "Forest Lake TV" across the top edge of the building, though there is now a frame shop in the location. Back in the 60s and early 70s, this was the place we called whenever one of our TVs was acting up. In the case of our floor model (a large 25-inch) black & white behemoth, they would make a house call, fix it there if they could, or otherwise cart it back to the shop. In the case of our 12-inch black & white portable (purchased after I assured my mother that I could fix the big tv -- I "fixed" it all right..), we would cart it to the shop ourselves. In some cases, when the fix was more than just changing a tube (kids, these were like incandescent light bulbs inside your tvs and radios! :-), the set might sit for weeks at the shop awaiting parts. This always seemed unreasonable to me (a kid missing all his shows..) but my parents seemed to feel the guys there knew what they were doing. I think we called them a few times after getting our color TV, but gradually it seemed that TVs were something you didn't fix. New sets were full of more integrated circuits and fewer components that could be swapped out one by one (to be fair, new sets were generally more reliable from the get-go as well).

I think this trend hurt Forest Lake TV, and sometime in the 70s or 80s, they moved to a location I considered a bit more out of the way and a little downscale, a site on Covenant Road near Trenholm park:

In this case as well, you can still see the stenciling for "Forest Lake TV" if you look hard. I think they had also added "and VCRs" at this time as well. I was living out of town by this point, so I never brought anything to them, and I'm pretty sure I would have heard if my sister or parents did, but I would drive by from time to time, see that they were still open and think "that's nice".

Sometime after that, they moved again, just a little ways down Covenant to a place that struck me as a bit more downscale still:

I'm guessing from the "Y2K" (remember that?) signage in the window, that this would have been the late 90s. After that, well, VCRs got so cheap that nobody ever had them repaired, and I don't think DVD players were even considered fixable. Sometime in 2006, I think, I was back in town, and the old color TV finally blew. I debated whether it was worth having fixed (it was about a 1978 model..) and called Forest Lake TV to see what it would take. I got an answering machine with a Mexican accent, so I'm guessing the place changed hands at or before the final move. I never followed up on it because I started moving my stuff back into town and just set up my TV from Aiken, and by the time I considered it again, TV technology was clearly changing too quickly to even consider fixing the old set.

Out of curiosity, I did call the number on the sign after taking the picture a few days ago, and it's been disconnected, so I guess the place's 40 year history has come to a close..

UPDATE 3 Feb 2009:

When I drove by the Forest Lake TV building today on my way to Moe's, there was a crowd gathered outside. I turned around and went back to see what was going on. The whole side of the parking lot was littered with VCRs, TVS, cassette decks, tuners amplifiers, vaccum tubes -- the works, and a crowd of people had gathered to rummage through the detritus.

I talked with one guy who seemed to be in charge of the building, and he said that the rent had been unpaid since last May and they finally got the OK from the Sherrif to clean out the building and throw everything to the curb. He expressed some amazement as to the sheer amount of equipment stored in the space and said it took several hours just to get all of it out and that there had been much more before people started picking through it (which he was encouraging). There were even enough large screen TVs to cordon off most of the parking lot to keep traffic from getting out of hand.

UPDATE 7 July 2010: Added two more pictures of the second location exterior above. For the record, the second building is not on Covenant Road as I said above, but on Bethel Church Road (and I have updated the post title to that effect), and is in fact, the old Ravenwood Pharmacy building. Also, it appears someone (perhaps the church next door?) is now using the end of the pharmacy building closest to Dollar General for storage:

Don Pablo's seemed to be an up-and-coming Mexican restaurant chain in the Southeast during the 90s. They had this location at Columbia Mall, a location in Charleston on Rivers Avenue, one in Augusta off of the Bobby Jones expressway and several in the Atlanta and Charlotte areas.

I have always enjoyed "chain" Mexican restaurants more than "authentic" ones, but Columbia has always seemed to have a problem attracting and keeping them. We had Garcia's (on O'Niel Court, I think) but only very briefly, and never had a Chi-Chi's, Chevy's, Rio Bravo, or On The Border, and my favorite Cucos lasted only a few years. El Chico (which I do like) seems to be the only national player with staying power, but at the time, I didn't see any reason Don Pablo's couldn't be a second.

They had a very comfortable interior, with plenty of booths, and I enjoyed several of their menu items quite a bit. In particular, the cheese & onion enchiladas were very tasty and were covered with a nice brown sauce and the chile rellenos were really good as well. The standard salsa was a bit bland (though better than the completely kickless tomato gunk at "authentic" places), but they had a "macho" salsa which was a bit embarassing to order, but which was a bit more interesting. My father liked the place too, and we often ate there with my sister on weekends when I was in town (I was living in Aiken and working in Augusta at the time).

Unfortunately, the place came to exhibit several of the Signs Your Favorite Restaurant is About to Close including cutting back their hours. I mentally put Don Pablo's on the critical list, and sure enough I came by one evening, and the place was dark and empty.

I was disappointed, but there was still the Augusta location and the Charleston one which I could visit when I went down to see The Have Nots. I recall I was in the Augusta location on Election Night of 2000. On my way out (probably about 11:00), I passed by a TV in the bar and recall thinking very clearly something like "Man, this is going to be a squeaker!" -- little did I know..

Shortly after that, the Augusta location closed, while I was eating in the Charleston location, I noticed the Augusta manager making his way around the dining room, checking on the customers. He recognized me, and said he had always wanted to live in Charleston, and he considered himself lucky because the spot opened up just before the word came down that the ax was falling in Augusta. I guess his luck ran out soon after that as the Charleston location closed. (It's a "Wild Wing" now).

I don't go up to Charlotte very often, but I did find a Don Pablo's up there once, by chance but it was gone too the next time I stopped by.

I just spent three weeks working in the DC area (restaurants up there are very iffy on ice tea!) and found a DP still in operation at the Ptomac Yards mall on Jefferson Davis Highway. After several years with no experience of the place, it was a mixed bag. I think I went there three times, and once it was average, once it was very greasy, and once it was as good as I remembered. Looking around on the web, it seems that they had a corporate "near death" experience and have been bought by a new parent company at this point (which also seems to have "Hops", which still exists up there). We'll see how it works out.

In the meantime, the old Columbia Mall location now hosts The Charleston Crabhouse, and I wish them well, though I tend not to darken the door of seafood places.

UPDATE 17 July 2012 -- Below are some neon pix of the Don Pablo's logo from the streetside and front door signs at the Greenville Don Pablo's across from Haywood Mall. I've been there twice in the last month, and it was pretty good (as were the ones in Orlando and Atlanta that I've visted over the past year):

I should probably also mention here that the Charleston Crab House has closed.

What does it mean to say a park is "closed"? Well, the land could be sold and built, there could be a fence to keep people out, or as in the case of Forest Lake Park, it could just have been abandoned by its owners, whoever they were.

Forest Lake Shopping Center is on the corner of Trenholm Road and Forest Drive, directly across Forest from Threnholm Plaza and has had its ups and downs. Originally, the center was anchored by Campbell's Drug Store which was directly on the corner. Down from Campbell's on the storefronts facing Forest were my longtime barbershop, a hardware store and a lot of shops I've completely forgotten. The hardware closed fairly early on (probably by 1970) and at some point a 7-11 moved into that row.

I don't remember much about the storefronts facing away from Forest except that there was a cloth shop at one time, and later some sort of clothing store where I was fitted for a suit once. Across the parking lot from Campbell's, was a small branch bank, denomination forgotten, where my mother often used the drive-through. Behind the bank was a creek, with a footbridge over it leading off into the adjoining neighboorhood.

The Campbell's block of stores was separated from another block by an access cut-through, and this other block was generally more important to us, as the main part of it (now Coplons) was a Colonial grocery store, my mother's favored place to buy groceries. I don't know exactly why this was, as even then, Columbia didn't lack for grocery stores, and there was an A&P right across the road in Trenholm Plaza. The thing I remember is that she was convinced that "Farm Charm" medium-sharp chedder was the only cheese worth buying (she convinced me as well) and "Farm Charm" was available only at Colonial or Big Star groceries. (There was a Big Star abuting the K-Mart on Fort Jackson Blvd). The block of stores with Colonial also held Forest Lake TV, where we had our sets repaired several times, and Sakura Japanese restaurant, which is still there, and must be the oldest Japanese restaurant in Columbia.

Colonial folded (I think) in the late 60s (leaving us to go over to Big Star for cheese..). I don't recall how long it was before Coplon's moved in, but I'm pretty sure it was there before they knocked down the whole Campbell's side of the shopping center (dispossessing my barbers) and put in the new First Citizens and Talbots there. The branch bank had closed by then, and its space is now taken over by a gallery/frame-shop with the outbuildings being sucessfully run by an enterprising garden store.

What does this have to do with the park? Well, my impression always was that the park was run by Colonial as a place for kids to go play while their mothers' shopped. (Yes, in those days, as long as it wasn't across a major road, you could send the kids out of sight to play!). When Colonial went under, the park stopped being maintained. Every now and then, there might be a minor repair, which I imagine the (mostly hard-luck by now) shops being dunned for, but in general there was nothing. The last major thing to happen was the carting off of the swingset, which had been swing-less for years.

Today, there are 3 fixtures. Here are two, the bench and the monkey bars:

Here's a closer look at the monkey bars:

I have a particularly vivid memory of these. Once, when my mother was shopping at Colonial, and my sister & I were playing in the park, I had one of those ideas that seems good at the time and decided that I could probably hang by my knees off of the bars across the top. As it turned out, I could. What I couldn't do, being little more athletic then than now, was get down again. After several increasingly anxious minutes of contemplating a drop onto the ground or the other bars, I sent my sister into Colonial to get my mother, who (the situation probably having been conveyed to her in a garbled manner to sound more alarming than it was) abandoned her cart and came racing around the corner. In the event, I had just figured out how to get down anyway...

Gills Creek forms the backdrop for the park, and I'm a bit surprised that no restaurant on either side of the creek has ever had a creek deck. It's rather peaceful and pleasant:

Here's Gills Creek on the other side of the bridge from the park:

Eightmile Branch forms the back boundry of Forest Lake Shopping Center and here's where it runs into Gills Creek:

Here is the park's third fixture, a merry-go-round:

Of course there is a drawback to having a park (or shopping center for that matter) bordered by creeks: Creeks rise.

Sometime back in the 90s, we had a 100 year flood in Forest Acres. At that point, a lot of Gamewell Drive was under water with parts of Sylvan Drive innundated as well. Given its position at the confluence of Eightmile Branch & Gills Creek, a good bit of Forest Lake Shopping Center was under water (most of the Garden Center area) as was all of the park. One of the local stations, I believe it was WLTX, had a crew in the parking lot shooting footage of the flood. I had to tell them they were looking at a park (I think I got on TV, but I can't recall for sure). At that point, the merry-go-round was completely invisible under at least six inches of water. For some reason, I was walking around in my flip-flops, having parked my car a good ways off. I considered wading out to the merry-go-round to ride a turn around on it to give them a good visual, but decided I wasn't going to risk my feet on who knows what washed up detritus without something more substantial shielding them. I know I took some flood pictures myself, if I ever find them again, I'll get them digitized and post a few.

Anyway, if you want to sit on a bench, climb the monkey-bars, or take a spin on the merry-go-round Forest Lake Park is still there for now..

UPDATE 15 May 2010 -- Here's a pointless quicktime video of the merry-go-round in motion from 26 Aug 2009

And here's Forest Lake Park in the snow from 13 Feb 2010:

UPDATE 10 Feb 2011 -- In April 2010, someone cut down a honking big pine tree, and put the segments around the merry-go-round:

UPDATE 4 April 2013: Tragedy!

I'm guessing that with the continuing renovations at the old Dobbs House/Forest Lake Spirits/Carolina Paws building, somebody noticed the park and the merry-go-round and decided it was a huge liability issue. At any rate, both remaining park fixtures, the merry-go-round and an old park bench have been torn out and the park is now just an empty lot except for the ring of buried bricks around where the merry-go-round used to be:

Here's two shots from my first and only TV interview at the park on 1 March 2011:

UPDATE 25 June 2017 -- Changed the merry-go-round video to a youtube embed rather than a hosted .mov file.