The City of Downey has purchased The Avenue, Downey’s smallest, most vacant movie house–a single-screen theater on Downey Avenue in the heart of the downtown.

That’s according to Samantha Gonzaga in this morning’s Press-Telegram–part of which was once prepared in a small office next door.

The city’s cost: $1.2 million for the 850-seat theater which is housed in a 1920s-era building, plus $25,000 in escrow and title costs. The city’s plans for its prize are uncertain as yet–but while The Avenue’s jutting marquee may stay, its days of screening films appear to be over. (In fact, the theater hasn’t shown movies for about four years, Gonzaga reports.)

Deputy City Manager Gilbert Livas told the P-T that the city might spearhead the development of a restaurant in the front of the 9,240-square-foot space, and perhaps housing in the back.

“We felt it was a very critical piece of property in the middle of our downtown,” Livas said in the P-T. He’s right about that; The Avenue was once the only thing separating the Press-Telegram’s Downey bureau one door to the north from the thrift store one door to the south. (Also, it’s about a block from the Downey Civic Center.)

I covered Downey for the P-T (and South Gate too) from 1996 to some time in 2000, and I found some amazing things in that thrift store, including a 1950s-era Heywood Wakefield nightstand; an old Capitol Records LP case with the words “Elvis Presley” and a bunch of old Elvis novelty stamps glued on the front; pretty much every Keely Smith LP ever, for some reason–and one of those old stuffed monkey toys with the rubber face and white shoes.

One night after work, I even found a two-piece 1950s-era sofa out behind the thrift store (sans cushions) and managed to jam most of it in the trunk of my dad’s 1967 Chevelle. All it needed was new upholstery.

(As for the Chevelle, someone later rear-ended and totalled it–something I was unable to do despite blowing a power slide one morning coming out of the Long Beach traffic circle, and skidding backwards into the curb outside Circle Porsche/Audi through two oncoming lanes of rush-hour traffic.)

Several years after I moved back to the P-T’s Long Beach office, they closed the bureau and it became a Mexican restaurant. I’m not sure what it is now.

In other northern news, the P-T’s John Canalis reports that Johnny Rebs’ Southern Roadhouse–the venerable Southern restaurant on Long Beach Boulevard just south of Del Amo Boulevard–has reopened following a ruinous fire last summer.

Canalis’s lede? “Reconstruction has come to Johnny Rebs’ Southern Roadhouse.” Indeed. And Jefferson Davis could not be reached for comment.

The staff, Canalis reported, made light of the blaze when he visited; they wore “Johnny Rebs’ Smokes” T-shirts, “with an image of a pig dressed as a firefighter spraying water on a blaze.”

A delicious pig, we’re assuming.

Tags: 1967 Chevelle, California, Capitol Records, Circle Porsche/Audi, downey, Downey Avenue, Downey Civic Center, Downey Deputy City Manager Gilbert Livas, elvis presley, Heywood Wakefield, Jefferson Davis, john canalis, Johnny Rebs' Southern Roadhouse, Keely Smith, Long Beach, press telegram, Press-Telegram Downey bureau, Samantha Gonzaga, South Gate, Southern California, The Avenue Theater, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas