In California, Fast Food Entrepreneur Buys Route 66 Town

He made his fortune with Juan Pollo restaurants in California's Inland Empire. For $425,000 in cash, Albert Okura purchased Roy's hotel and cafe, the church and post office, four gas pumps, two dirt airstrips and a variety of scattered buildings. The price included several hundred acres of adjacent desert that he believes could increase in value if development in the Inland Empire continues to push east.

Movie buffs may recall Roy's Hotel as a dark, forbidding hangout for psychopathic killers in "Kalifornia" and the 1986 version of "The Hitcher." "Commercial photographers find the hotel's weathered, angled facade and primitive surroundings an edgy backdrop for cars and clothing. The Internet is lousy with images and paeans to Roy's Googie architecture and the role it played during Route 66's glory days." Taylor Louden, a Culver City architecture consultant who recently toured Amboy and is developing a renovation proposal for Okura, explains: "It's a landmark. Classic Route 66 roadside architecture. It's a real survivor of that period."