The 1958 Downey drive-in, opened by owners Harvey and Minnie Ortner when 1950s car culture was at its most pervasive, was all but demolished Jan. 7 by a lessee.

Local preservationists vowed not to rest until the drive-in was fully restored, and that same month, members of Downey City Council slapped Johnie’s owner Christos Smyrniotis with a one-year moratorium on developing the property.

At its Dec. 11 meeting, the Council voted to let the moratorium expire, and to hire–at Smyrniotis’s expense–a “consultant to analyze options to preserve all or portions of the structure that were damaged due to the demolition.”

The week before that, Smyrniotis had acquiesced to the city’s demands that he pay for a historic preservation consultant, in a Dec. 5 letter from the City of Downey which he signed. He also agreed to give the consultant access to the Johnie’s site at Firestone Boulevard and Old River School Road.

But will all this end in a restoration of Johnie’s Broiler to 1958 condition? Or will Smyrniotis–who tried unsuccessfully to redevelop the historically significant site prior to its demolition–wind up leading the development of something like a Johnie’s strip mall, capped with portions of the original sign?

Members of The Coalition to Save Harvey’s Broiler (the restaurant’s original name) are skeptical.

“That’s the scary part, when they said ‘hire an architectural historian to see what can be salvaged and look at potential restoration development,’ ” says Coalition member Analisa Ridenour, a longtime Broiler supporter. “It could give a loophole in the development for a Johnie’s Broiler strip mall–or it could be an authentic version of the diner.”

Which way the project will go is impossible to say at this point.

According to city staffers, the building’s remains have deteriorated significantly since a man driving a bulldozer knocked down most of it without a permit on Jan. 7.

“Have you been by it?” an employee asked me when I telephoned the Downey City Clerk’s office this morning. “More things fell down since [the demolition]. It looks even poorer since then.”

Ridenour says that Smyrniotis told her at the Dec. 11 Council meeting that he expects a Johnie’s rebirth.

“When I left the meeting, I saw Mr. Smyrniotis, and I shook his hand as a good-faith gesture,” Ridenour said. “And he looked at me, and he said, ‘Believe me, have you heard of the bird the phoenix?’ He said, ‘It will rise from the ashes.’ ”

That’s an interesting line; Smyrniotis used it on me almost verbatim, when I encountered him at Johnie’s shortly after the demolition. Perhaps next year, we’ll finally get a look at this phoenix.

Tags: Analisa Ridenour, California, car culture, Christos Smyrniotis, downey, Downey City Council, Harvey Ortner, Harvey's Broiler, historic preservation, Johnie's Broiler, Long Beach, Minnie Ortner, phoenix, Southern California, The Coalition to Save Harvey's Broiler, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas