When the new Panera Bread opened in Montclair last month with much fanfare (baguette ripping and ribbon cutting), the previous restaurants at that location got old hands talking.
Islands Burgers was the obvious predecessor, especially because Islands had been closed since 2010 but continued to stand there with signage and landscaping intact until it was finally demolished in 2023. For 13 years, you could say, it was an abandoned Islands.
Decades earlier, the site was home to Van de Kamp’s Bakery, with a spinning windmill draped in blue neon lights above the entrance. Do you remember it? At least, that’s according to Bill Ruh, a native and longtime city council member who also serves as Montclair’s unofficial keeper of memories.
Ruh said there was another restaurant between Van de Kamp’s in the 1970s and Islands in the 1990s and 2000s, but in a rare slip-up he couldn’t remember the name. I asked around. No one at City Hall knew. The consensus was that Ruh might have been mistaken.
But I had faith. And a few weeks later, Ruh sent an email with the name: Tiny Naylor’s.
Ah, Tiny Naylor’s. They died out in the 1990s, before I was here, but the LA-based chain of restaurants, some with Googie architecture, is still remembered.
They come from the days of Ships, Ben Frank’s, Kerry’s, Sheri’s, Henry’s, Harvey’s Broiler, Coffee Dan’s, the Copper Penny and others, when waitresses wore name tags, the most famous sandwich was the Monte Cristo, the coffee flowed freely and you could finish your meal with a fresh slice of cake.
But did Tiny Naylor’s influence really reach the Inland Empire? Yes, at least just about.
Ruh included an ad from Tiny Naylor in his email listing all the locations and their addresses. The farthest east is Montclair at 5210 Moreno St. (Side note: Panera’s address is 5212.)
The text of the ad states that Tiny Naylor’s, founded in 1949, has been in business for “over 50 years,” which dates the ad to around 1990. The phone number in Montclair has the area code 714. 714 was abolished in 1992 when 909 was created.
It seems likely to me that after Van de Kamp left, Tiny Naylor took over the vacant building. But I don’t know.
Tiny Naylor was human too.
His name was William Wallace “Tiny” Naylor. As is common with men nicknamed “Tiny,” the nickname was ironic: Naylor was reportedly 6’4″ tall and weighed 290 pounds.
He opened the first Tiny Naylor’s in 1949 on the corner of Sunset and La Brea in Hollywood. Naylor died in 1959, but his son Bill “Biff” Naylor ran the restaurant until the 1990s.
Biff also owned a chain of Biff’s Coffee Shops and came out of retirement in 2004 to save Du-Par’s.
This is neither here nor there, I guess, but it was nice to learn that Tiny Naylor’s had a presence in the Inland Empire.
Tiny Naylor himself did the same. He owned a 640-hectare horse breeding farm in Jurupa Valley. In the 1950s, he built a colonial-style mansion with a columned porch to please his wife Millie.
Known as Crestmore Manor, it is now part of Rancho Jurupa Park. A 2013 Press-Enterprise article described the property as a popular wedding destination and something out of Gone with the Wind.
(Since these columns are all somehow connected, you’ll be reading “Gone with the Wind” here next month. History buffs will know immediately why. The rest of you can guess.)
As we returned to Montclair—and why did we leave in the first place?—Ruh recalled the changes that the small shopping center on Moreno Street, where Panera now stands, has undergone over the past half century.
Target replaced Montgomery Ward. Wells Fargo replaced First Interstate Bank, which replaced United California Bank. The now-vacant 99 Cents Only store replaced Thrifty Drug.
And to top it all off, Ruh concluded: “Panera replaced Islands, which replaced Tiny Naylor’s, which replaced Van de Kamp’s.”
Ah, the neon-rimmed windmills of our minds.
More Montclair
As I explained in my column, it took eight years to get a Panera in that spot, with much of the delay being due to the private sector. The mall has multiple owners and corporate tenants with complex leases. Not everyone saw a Panera with a drive-thru as a win-win, at least not without gentle persuasion or currency exchanges.
Two years earlier, Panera had been investigating a property a few blocks away on the western edge of the Montclair Place shopping center on Monte Vista Avenue at South Plaza Lane, where a Texaco gas station used to be located.
“The challenge there, similar to Moreno Street, was squeezing the building and the drive-thru lane onto a site that just wasn’t suitable for it,” said Steve Lustro, the city’s retired director of development. “I’m glad Panera and the city government didn’t abandon this project and found an alternative site.”
Ed Starr, the city manager, told me Panera was the third chain interested in the Moreno Street location.
Raising Cane’s inquired first but passed rather than wait for a zoning change. Chick-fil-A inquired next but settled on a vacant lot across from Moreno on the north side of Montclair Place next to Robbins Bros. Jewelry.
However, Robbins Bros. has since moved and the old building will be demolished as part of a new mixed-use development that will not include a fast-food restaurant, Starr said.
Too bad for Raising Cane’s and Chick-fil-A. Finding a suitable location for a drive-in restaurant is not for the faint of heart.
David Allen writes Fridays, Sundays and (brawwk!) Wednesdays. Email: [email protected], phone: 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.
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