Avenue Café Abruptly Shuts Its Doors

This story was written by Jeff Lipton.

First Bi-Wise Drugs and now Avenue Café.  

Two large adjacent shops in the heart of Long Beach have closed within a month, but it’s a mystery why Avenue Café, at 20 W. Park Ave., shut its doors for good last week. 

“It seems like they moved out in the darkness of night,” city Buildings Department Commissioner Scott Kemins said of the café. “Maybe it was some kind of economic thing.”  Michael Kerr, president of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, said the sudden closing also took him by surprise.  

“I have no idea,” Kerr said. “I’ve been trying to find out. I put in a call to [the owner]. It happened overnight. He never mentioned going out [of business] or anything like that.”  

Bi-Wise, at 26 W. Park Ave., was recently bought out by the nearby Rite-Aid and it is not known what will become of that property.  

Kerr said with the closing of two large businesses in the middle of town, he is a bit concerned.  

“It’s nothing to panic about,” Kerr said. “But having two empty stores like that is terrible. We don’t want there to be empty stores, but I’m sure they will get people in there.  

“Stores come in and stores go out,” Kerr added. “We’re very lucky in Long Beach because the stores rent over here.”  

He said that since they are two large stores, they could possibly be subdivided into smaller businesses.  

“They just went out of business,” said one Long Beach business owner, who did not want his name used. “They shut their doors on Sunday [Sept. 23] at 5 p.m., didn’t let anyone in and took everything out of the place. I stopped there and handed their employees my card to see if they needed jobs.”  

One local realtor, who also didn’t want to be identified, said she was shocked to see the café had closed.  

“I saw a truck empty it out and nobody knows why,” she said. “It looked like they were always busy for lunch and fairly busy for breakfast. He just took his equipment, didn’t say good-bye to anybody and just walked away.”  

The realtor said she thought it was odd that the café, which had opened around 6 a.m., started opening around 10 a.m. for breakfast starting about five weeks ago, when most people were already at work.  

She said she is not worried at all that two major businesses have now closed their doors in about a month. “It doesn’t look good for Long Beach, but I feel like Long Beach is a thriving city,” she said.  

The Avenue Café is a former site of Monterey and Corbin & Reynolds before that. Phone calls left at the café were not returned.