McDonald’s to Close Landmark ‘50s Restaurant : Preservation: Firm rejects calls for saving building, the oldest in operation, citing annual losses of $50,000. Activists and Downey officials plan a final effort to keep the golden arches raised.

The last original McDonald’s restaurant still serving burgers--a Downey landmark complete with golden arches and a 60-foot-high winking “Speedee” in a white hat--will be closed despite preservationists’ attempts to keep it operating, officials said Saturday.

“A decision has been made to close the store,” said Bill Kolberg of Bob Thomas & Associates, a public relations firm representing the McDonald’s Operators’ Assn. of Southern California. “There were a number of factors involved, but in the end it was strictly a business decision.”

The store, which opened in August, 1953, is believed to be losing about $50,000 a year, largely because it lacks a drive-through window and is deemed unsuitable for remodeling. No date has been given for the closure.

The decision is prompting angry responses from preservationists and Downey officials, who vowed to mount one last attempt to save the restaurant.

“It’s bad news--not the news I expected, given McDonald’s sensitivity to public opinion,” said Downey City Councilwoman Joyce Lawrence, who has spearheaded the preservation campaign. “I don’t think people making the final decision know how important this McDonald’s is--it’s ‘50s nostalgia for some people, part of our commercial history, the forerunner of most of our fast-food business.”

Lawrence, who bought her first burger at the stand while she was a student at Downey High School in 1957, said she will join forces with the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit preservationist group that is circulating petitions aimed at persuading McDonald’s corporate leaders to change their minds.

“This is crazy,” said Pete Moruzzi, chairman of the Modern Committee of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “How can a multibillion-dollar corporation let something like this close over $50,000 a year?”

Moruzzi said the announcement is particularly distressing because it falls hard on the heels of the announced closure of two other prominent Los Angeles-area commercial establishments: Bullock’s Wilshire department store and the Sheraton-Town House, also in the Wilshire corridor.

With its two golden arches, red and white tile walls and towering neon sign, the store is in virtually vintage condition. The towering “Speedee,” added in 1960, runs on legs of neon. He wears a white hat, white coat, blue pants and bow tie, and winks as if to say: “Come on in.” The store is at Lakewood Boulevard and Florence Avenue.

Kolberg said McDonald’s would consider working with Downey officials to move the sign to another location.

That notion has met with little enthusiasm.

“That whole idea (of moving the sign) is fraught with a lot of problems,” Lawrence said. “The sheer physical moving of it isn’t easy, and it is in violation of (current) signage code. . . . Besides, what good’s sign without the hamburger stand?”

The old stand was the third location McDonald’s opened, one of about 1,000 golden arches stands that were the company prototype until 1968. The first two, in San Bernardino and Phoenix, have been demolished. While others remain--one is a McDonald’s museum--the one in Downey is the only one still serving hamburgers.

Observers believe that the Downey stand was spared because it was owned for more than 35 years by the independent-minded Roger Williams and Burdette Landon, who got their franchise from the McDonald brothers. Even after the company was sold to Ray Kroc in 1961, Williams and Landon maintained their independence, spurning corporate offers to buy the operation.

Williams and Landon were in their 80s when they sold to the company in 1990.

But the property was purchased in 1982 by the Pep Boys--Manny, Moe & Jack--automotive company, which has a store a few doors away. It was negotiations between McDonald’s and Pep Boys over a new lease that prompted the decision to close the restaurant, Kolberg said.

The stand has been listed as a landmark by the Downey Historical Society since 1980, and was declared eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, but Pep Boys declined to have it included for fear it could hinder use of the property.

“It seems that Pep Boys offered a better deal to them,” Lawrence said. “But McDonald’s just decided they really wanted to close it.”

No Pep Boys representatives could be reached for comment Saturday.

Moruzzi said he still believes that the hamburger stand could be saved if public support for saving the building grows and McDonald’s promotes the site as a tourist and movie attraction.