Has Columbia’s Five Points shifted its balance of nightlife and daytime business?
Benjamin Franklin once said, “When you are finished changing, you’re finished.”
And in Columbia, Five Points is never finished changing.
For more than 100 years, the urban village just east of the University of South Carolina has been almost like a living, breathing organism, adapting and shifting and serving the needs of different segments of the city. If you’ve been around Columbia long enough, you’ve got memories — some, admittedly, perhaps a little hazy — connected to Five Points.
The district has, of course, long been known for its at-times hard-charging bar scene, long a favorite of university students. But Five Points also has been heralded for its eclectic gathering of other offerings, the ones that are put to use during the daytime or shortly after the sun goes down.
There are pizza parlors and sandwich delis, sneaker shops and women’s clothing boutiques. In Five Points you’ll find burger joints and taco spots and barber shops. It is a downtown neighborhood in the purest sense, mixing longtime, generational businesses with upstarts and hopeful newcomers.
And in recent times, the long-running district has been going through a seeming season of change, one that appears ready to birth a new version of the neighborhood.
The district’s nightlife scene has been reshaped in the last several years, on a couple fronts. Several years ago attorney Dick Harpootlian and residents of some of the leafy neighborhoods that surround Five Points challenged liquor licenses at a number Five Points bars, eventually leading some establishments to close. And while the district certainly still has an active bar scene, other areas of the city have seemingly made gains in terms of nightlife popularity, particularly the Vista and the emergent Main Street area.
Meanwhile, major changes are underway in a key thoroughfare in Five Points, as a $5 million pedestrian safety project is ongoing along Harden Street. Among a number of other things, the overhaul is reducing Harden Street from four lanes to two between Devine and Blossom Streets. Construction has been going on for a year — to the frustration of some — and is set to wrap up this summer, state Department of Transportation officials have said.
And, through the early part of 2025, Five Points has seen a spurt of new business openings in various parts of the neighborhood.
Cocky Rooster, a burgeoning chicken restaurant chain from Virginia, opened a Five Points spot at 2019 Greene St. in March. Babylon Kino, a venue that screens underground, off-beat films, debuted at 631 Harden St. in February. A new Chinese restaurant called Luna Kitchen opened its doors in March at 724 Harden St., in the spot of the former Horseshoe bar.
Over at 734 Saluda Avenue, well-known women’s clothier Copper Penny, which has locations across the South, opened a new shop in March. And Big Dave’s Cheesesteaks, a quickly growing company out of Atlanta, opened the doors on a Five Points location on Harden Street in March. The spot quickly proved popular, with lines often seen snaking out the door at lunchtime.
Five Points leaders have taken note of the new businesses that have arrived and the current moment in the district.
“I think this is kind of the culmination of a lot of work over the last five or six years,” said Five Points Association board member Steve Cook, who owns fine dining mainstay Saluda’s in the neighborhood, as well as the Arroyo taco restaurant that debuted on Harden Street last year. “When Steve Benjamin was the mayor, he used to always kind of say that we’re right on the cusp of something in Five Points. I totally agreed. It’s like we’re a rock on top of a cliff, and if somebody pushes it over, it’s just going to take off.”
’A little more daytime’?
Tim Smith and Papa Jazz Record Shoppe aren’t going anywhere. In fact, the iconic Five Points shop at 2014 Greene St. doubled down on its commitment to the neighborhood last year.
Papa Jazz, which has been a part of Five Points for more than five decades, underwent major renovations in 2024. It moved to a temporary space at 747 Saluda Ave. — a former Starbucks location — for five months last year, before returning to its longtime Greene Street space in December. Since then, Smith, the shop’s longtime owner, said business has been good and that sales during the recent annual Record Store Day event exceeded sales from a year ago.
Five Points is simply home for Papa Jazz, Smith said.
“I’ve been here since ‘79,” he said, with a little chuckle. “At this point I’m not looking to make a change.”
Smith, who is on the Five Points Association board, said he has watched the neighborhood go through multiple evolutions across the past 46 years.
“The kind of businesses are always a little in flux,” Smith said. “I think we have probably been getting a little more daytime, a little more retail, which is a good thing.”
Ashley Lindler is the owner of A Little Happy, a multi-faceted Five Points gift shop. She first opened the store in a temporary space in November 2021, before moving the shop to its current home at 707 Saluda Ave. in 2023. Lindler jokes that A Little Happy is “an upscale Spencer’s,” noting that it carries gifts for sororities, as well as jewelry, stickers, hats, home decor, games toys and more.
“Our tagline is ‘All the things you never knew you needed,’” Lindler recently told The State.
Lindler said she wanted to open a shop that was at least partially geared toward college students, and Five Points, just down the hill from USC, fit the bill. She said she’s been pleased with the ways in which the neighborhood has been growing lately.
“I feel like it’s gelling,” Lindler said. “I think that we’re really catering to the college community, but also the [surrounding] neighborhoods.”
Meanwhile, there are budding businesses for which Five Points just feels like the right spot. Roger Caughman and Kailey Cunningham run Godspeed Coffee, a pop-up operation that has become popular for its creative drinks. Godspeed gained a foothold when it was bundled in with the temporary home of Papa Jazz last year at 747 Saluda Ave., at the former Starbucks spot. After Papa Jazz moved back to its regular Greene Street haunt, Godspeed moved its pop-up down Saluda Avenue to the Boyd Innovation Center.
But now Godspeed is planning something with more roots. Later this year it will move back to the former Starbucks space at 747 Saluda, where it will establish a permanent location.
Caughman said the moment is right to open a full Godspeed shop in Five Points.
“As far back as I can go with Kailey and I conceptualizing Godspeed, we definitely did want to be in the Five Points neighborhood,” Caughman said. “That was No. 1 on our list the whole time. We adore the people down there, we adore the businesses and the people who live around there and frequent the businesses. It’s a really, really cool, eclectic pocket for Columbia right now.”
And while Five Points has added new retail shops, coffee houses and restaurants in recent times, with more on the way, it has also continued to offer some newer spots that feed into its longstanding reputation as a funky urban village.
For instance, in late 2023 New Brookland Tavern, the rock club and live music venue which had long been a staple on West Columbia’s State Street, moved into the space at 632 Harden St. And earlier this year, Babylon Kino opened across the street on the second floor at 631 Harden, offering a space for the screening of underground films. The venue recently held a screening of the Hong Kong exploitation flick “Ebola Syndrome,” and was set to show a double feature on April 26 featuring anime offerings “Attack of the Super Monsters” and “Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan.”
Filmmaker and journalist David Axe is one of several local creatives who opened Babylon Kino. He said Five Points seemed like the right spot for the venture.
“To have any hope of attracting an audience, to say nothing of walk-up traffic, we need to be located somewhere fun and cool where the surrounding area is a destination,” Axe said.
Balancing the nightlife
For years, stakeholders in Five Points and nearby neighbors have talked of finding a certain balance between the two different sides of the district.
On one hand, there is the sort of daytime vibe of the neighborhood. The one where you can grab a sandwich from Groucho’s, look for a new skateboard at Blue Tile or shop for some new threads at Loose Lucy’s or Sid & Nancy.
And on the other there is the neighborhood’s fabled nightlife, with bars ranging from Jake’s to Bar None to Group Therapy and beyond welcoming customers deep into the night.
While Five Points certainly still has its share of bars and nightlife offerings, some note the ledger seems to have shifted a bit toward restaurants and retail in recent times. Businessman Richard Burts has owned numerous buildings in Five Points through the years, including the former Starbucks site where Godspeed will be setting up a permanent shop.
Burts said he has seen the pendulum of Five Points swing in each direction across the decades.
“Five Points used to have a lot more retail, then we got a little bit out of balance,” Burts said. “And, you know, it’s probably more in balance now, and we have other [businesses] that are coming in. I don’t think it’s necessarily [a mentality of] hospitality versus retail. It’s the ecosystem. To be successful, I think it has to have balance, and it can get it can just get out of whack.”
Smith, the Papa Jazz owner, said having many different types of businesses is a benefit to the district, and that each side of the sort of daytime-nighttime nature of Five Points can complement each other.
“I think the key for any neighborhood to stay vibrant is to have sort of a blend so that you kind of cross-pollinate,” Smith said. “People may come down here during the day and see a bar they’ve heard about, or vice versa. They could be down here at nighttime and walk by some retail places they may have heard about and you get them to come back.”
Axe, the filmmaker and Babylon Kino proprietor, has a different take on the idea of balance between the nightlife and daytime sides of Five Points.
“The balance thing misses the point, I think,” Axe said. “People want to drink and have fun after dark. Most of us want to do it responsibly. Build more businesses that cater to these people rather than only building businesses that squeeze cheap dollars out of risky college kids.”
There are external forces that currently are affecting the bar scene, both in Five Points and elsewhere.
For instance, there is the state’s ongoing liquor liability insurance crisis. A state law passed in 2017 requires establishments that sell beer, wine or liquor for on-premises consumption to carry at least $1 million in liquor liability insurance. In the law’s wake, restaurateurs say some insurers have left the market in South Carolina in the last several years, thereby limiting the number of carriers they can use. Subsequently, many restaurateurs and bar owners have seen liquor liability insurance rates skyrocket.
The crisis hit home in January for Five Points’ Bar None. The watering hole, which has long been a favorite among service industry workers because of its laid-back vibes and the fact that it stayed open until the wee hours, was forced to scale back its latest hours after ownership said it could not get liquor liability insurance to serve past 2 a.m. The bar had been serving past 2 a.m. for the previous 30 years.
“I think the whole city and state loses something when places like that have to scale back,” said Cook, the Saluda’s and Arroyo owner who has been pushing for liquor liability reform. “You’re talking about a place with a completely flawless record. Bar None has less problems than anybody, and it’s just a shame.”
And, while protests against Five Points establishments from Harpootlian and nearby neighbors haven’t been as fervent lately as they were a few years ago, they are still active. Harpootlian and nearby residents in 2024 challenged the liquor license renewals for Group Therapy and Saloon.
This time around, Harpootlian said he is specifically challenging Group Therapy and Saloon over a section in the state Constitution that says establishments must be primarily and substantially in the business of serving meals in order to obtain alcohol licenses. Attorneys for Group Therapy and Saloon have insisted they operate in accordance with the law. Administrative law court hearings for the two establishments are scheduled for June.
What does the future hold?
As Five Points lives and breathes and propels itself into this latest season, there is more on the horizon.
For instance, the city of Columbia is set to sell the former state office building at 2221 Devine St. for $2 million, with the idea that the building will become a technology and innovation hub. The company Southeastern Technology Centers, LLC is set to purchase the building on the condition that they build Class A office space for technology companies.
The city said in a statement that “the adaptive re-use of this property has the potential to bring new jobs to the Five Points District and drive meaningful economic development” in Columbia.
“We’ve always said we need to focus on creating small businesses, connecting the innovation, networking and connectivity dots from universities to entrepreneurs looking to grow,” said Columbia City Councilman Will Brennan, whose District 3 includes a chunk of Five Points.
Brennan added that he thinks having the possible tech hub at 2221 Devine and the potential personnel it could bring will be good for the restaurants, shops and other businesses of Five Points.
Meanwhile, there remain talks of bringing a new hotel to Five Points. Burts is part of a group that has, for several years, been working to recruit a hotel to the former Wells Fargo property in the 700 block of Saluda Avenue. He told The State those plans are still in play and some progress has been made.
“We’ve come very close a couple of times,” Burts said of the possibility of a hotel at the site. “And we’ve got someone looking at it now, so hopefully we’ll find the right match-up.”
Lindler, the owner of A Little Happy, says her ideal future vision for Five Points is one in which every storefront in the district is filled, with a mixture of businesses represented. Even now, she says, there is nothing quite like Five Points.
“I feel like Five Points is being able to walk around, enjoying the people in the stores, going to Drip to get a coffee, sitting outside, going to the Gourmet Shop, grabbing some chicken salad,” she said. “I mean, you can make a day of it in Five Points. And you can’t do that when you’re sitting on your sofa shopping online at Amazon.”
This story was originally published April 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
