Bakersfield’s historic Woolworth’s building is surely a dichotomy, a study in contrast.
It’s both a time capsule filled with nostalgia and memory and it’s the home of a new and modern vision made of concrete, steel, confidence and determination that exists not just in the past, but in the here and now.
This local pioneer of the five-and-dime retail style opened 75 years ago in 1950 in Bakersfield’s burgeoning post-war downtown business district.
On Saturday, it opened again — some say it was reborn. Four years after Sherod and Emily Waite and former business partner David Anderson announced they were buying it, the Waites closed 19th and K streets and threw a grand opening and block party to mark the occasion.
The entire community was invited to join the celebration — with music, food and fun — all to begin another chapter in the 44,000-square-foot building’s rich and diverse history.
“Emily and I were born and raised here in Bakersfield,” Sherod Waite told the several hundred people who gathered on that city block and inside Woolworth’s famous luncheonette, the last operating Woolworth’s luncheonette in the country.
“We both graduated from Bakersfield High School. I went to Bakersfield College and graduated from Cal State Bakersfield, and we raised our three boys here,” he said.
“This town has given us so much, and our hope with this project is to be able to give back to the town and specifically give back to the downtown urban core.”
Not only is the project bringing nearly 50 jobs to the city’s downtown, he said, they hope it will help anchor the ongoing effort to improve and grow the historic business district.
Emily Waite, who managed the four-year effort, said she thought long and hard about what she wanted to say to all the well-wishers in the crowd Saturday.
“This project has been challenging and difficult and complex,” she said. “It has also been moving and meaningful and joyful at the same time.
“We have often said that this building is our love letter to Bakersfield, and that is truly how we feel. Those are not just words,” Waite said.
“Over the course of my life here in Bakersfield, what I’ve come to understand and what I have chosen to believe is that a life of purpose and meaning and joy is a life in which one contributes to, engages in, nurtures and gives back to the community in which they live.
“So that is what this building is about for us. And our desire and our goal is for this building to be a place for you all to do the same, to participate in and nurture and give back to each other in this community that we call Bakersfield.
“We love Bakersfield. We love all of you,” she told the crowd. “Welcome back to Woolworth’s.”
As a wide variety of musical artists performed on a big stage set up for the event, hundreds slowly filed into the newly restored luncheonette for free burgers, fresh-cut fries and ice cream cones for dessert.
Dale Oprandy, executive director of nearby Inclusion Films, was sitting at the counter inside the luncheonette just taking it all in.
Oprandy is working on a documentary about Bakersfield and its history, and a tour of Woolworth’s was a must in his exploration.
“When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, we had a Woolworth’s in the town next to mine … So as kids, we would go there with our parents, and the last thing you would do after you shopped was sit at the lunch counter and have a hot dog,” he remembered. “They had balloons, and if you’d pop a balloon, you may get a free ice cream, or free French fries, but it was the greatest thing.”
There’s something about the Woolworth’s in Bakersfield, he said. “It’s a very nostalgic place.”
Nostalgia was also on the mind of 18-year-old Bakersfield College student Alysa Murphy, but the double major is nostalgic for the antique mall that operated for years at the store before the former owner sold to the Waites.
“My grandma and my dad would both bring me here,” she remembered. “I love antiques and Woolworth’s was one of my favorite places to go.
“It’s early Saturday morning and I’d get together with my dad,” Murphy recalled. “We’d walk down the street and hit all the different antique stores and then we’d end up here for lunch.
“And I always remember getting the biggest chocolate shake with my burger and my fries, and it held so many memories for me.”
During that period, the old Woolworth’s was owned and operated by one-time Taft resident Mark Sheffield, who bought the boarded-up building in 1994.
Sheffield and his wife, Linda, eventually settled on renting spaces for antique dealers.
Jeremy Tremell and his brother later took over operations of the beloved luncheonette, transforming it into a local favorite, according to the history on the Waites’ website.
In September 2021, the Waites announced they were purchasing the grand fixer-upper, and the rest is history.
“Coming just from a tourism standpoint, I think it’s going to bring in not just people from Bakersfield, but people from out of the area as well,” said Alan Alvarez, vice chairman of the Downtown Business Association and chairman of the Downtown Business Development Corp.
“I genuinely believe that that is going to bring tourism to our downtown area,” he said. “That tying in with all of the other Eastchester projects that are going on.”
The newly refurbished building, Alvarez said, is a “key anchor” that he believes will help already established businesses and help attract new businesses to the area east of Chester Avenue.
“This is a historic day for downtown Bakersfield,” said Ward 2 Bakersfield City Councilman Andrae Gonzales, who represents most of the downtown area.
“The fact that we’re able to restore such a beautiful building associated with so many stories and memories for people in the community … and also the fact that this investment and revitalization will help spur future growth in this area, is huge,” he said.