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The front sign announces that Friendly Hills Lanes on Whittier Boulevard is closed on Thursday June 4, 2015. (Photo by Keith Durflinger/San Gabriel Valley Tribune)
WHITTIER >> The 60-year-old Friendly Hills Lanes closed this week.
The bowling alley, 15545 Whittier Blvd., owned by New York City-based AMF Bowling Co., long considered an example of Googie architecture, apparently is in escrow to be sold, said Conal McNamara, director of planning and community development for the city.
McNamara said the developer, Newport Beach-based Frontier Real Estate Investments, hasn’t yet submitted plans to the city. But the building will be saved, he predicted.
“There is a realization on the part of the developer and the city that tearing it down is not in the best course of action,” McNamara said. “It’s a historic building, and we want to work with them to preserve it.”
McNamara said the area is zoned for commercial in the Whittier Boulevard Specific Plan.
Officials from AMF Bowling didn’t return a phone call or an email seeking comment on the decision to close and sell the building.
Dan Almquist, managing partner for Frontier, also didn’t return two phone calls seeking comment.
The bowling alley – along with the Five Points Car Wash in Whittier – have been cited as examples of Googie architecture described by Chris Jepsen, an archivist for Orange County, on his website, Googie Architecture Online.
“Bold angles, colorful signs, plate glass, sweeping cantilevered roofs and pop-culture imagery captured the attention of drivers on adjacent streets,” wrote Jepsen in describing Googie architecture.
“Bowling alleys looked like Tomorrowland,” Jepsen wrote. “Coffee shops looked like something in a ‘Jetsons’ cartoon. For decades, many `serious’ architects decried Googie as frivolous or crass. But today we recognize how perfectly its form followed its function.”
Another example of Googie architecture, the Norms La Cienega restaurant, recently was given historic-cultural status by the Los Angeles City Council.
In Whittier, many are sorry about the closure of the bowling alley.
“I think it’s a shame,” said Councilman Bob Henderson, who remembers bowling at Friendly Hills Lanes as a teenager in the 1950s,
“I love to see these places that give an outlet to young people and to people of all ages for both group and individual activities,” he said. “It’s a loss to the community.”
Henderson said he remembers bowling there into the wee hours of the morning.
“It was very popular,” he said. “It was a great hangout for everybody but for a lot of teenagers, especially. They’d go to football games and would end up there until 2 or 3 a.m. It was a place where your parents didn’t mind you going.”
Bob Ruiz, who has the “My Whittier” Facebook page, said it’s another example of the changing of the Whittier landscape.
“It’s one of the last landmarks we have,” Ruiz said. “I hate to see it close down. It’s the kind of thing that made Whittier unique. I’m going to miss it.”
James Baldwin of unincorporated West Whittier, who has been bowling at Friendly Hills Lanes off and on for the last 10 years, said he was surprised about the closure.
“They renovated less than a year ago,” Baldwin said. “They had projectors pointing at every lane and were showing sports events and had music. It’s a little bizarre. It makes me think the renovation was a last-ditch effort to revive the business.”