Downey Movers

Getting to Know Downey

How Downey Is Laid Out

Downey is its own city in southeast Los Angeles County, about 13 miles southeast of downtown LA, in the group of communities known as the Gateway Cities. It covers roughly 12.4 square miles and holds about 114,000 people, which makes it a dense, fully built-out suburb. Being its own city, Downey sets its own truck-parking, oversized-vehicle, and permit rules, apart from the City of Los Angeles. The 5, 605, 710, and 105 freeways all run near or through the city, giving it strong links to LA and Orange County.

The city is mostly residential, with single-family neighborhoods on a flat grid making up the bulk of it. Downtown Downey, around Firestone Boulevard and the civic center, is the commercial and civic heart, with shops, restaurants, and the Stonewood Center mall nearby. Apartments and condos cluster along the main corridors like Firestone, Lakewood, and Paramount. The old Rockwell aerospace site on the city’s west side has been redeveloped into a movie studio, a shopping center, and a hospital campus. Norwalk lies to the east, Bellflower to the south, Pico Rivera to the north, and Paramount and South Gate to the west.

From Orange Groves to the Apollo Program

The land was home to the Tongva people before it became part of the Spanish Manuel Nieto land grant, then the Mexican Rancho Santa Gertrudes. The city is named for John Gately Downey, an Irish immigrant who became governor of California and bought part of the rancho in 1859. The town was founded in 1873, and for decades it was farm country, an “orange-grove town” growing citrus, grain, and corn.

Aircraft changed everything. Starting in the 1920s and booming during World War II, Downey became a center of aircraft manufacturing, with Vultee Aircraft as its largest employer. That plant grew into North American Aviation and later Rockwell. For over 70 years, the Downey NASA site was the birthplace of the Apollo space program. Workers there built the command and service modules that flew to the Moon, along with parts of the Space Shuttle. Downey incorporated as a city in 1956, one of the largest communities ever to incorporate at once. The aerospace plants closed in the late 1990s, but the city kept its identity. Today, it is a busy, diverse suburb, home to the oldest operating McDonald’s in the world and the hometown of the Carpenters.

What a Downey Move Really Involves

Downey runs its own affairs, so the rules that shape a move come from the city, not from Los Angeles. For bigger moves, the city issues temporary no-parking permits to hold curb space at the address, set up and posted ahead of time. Certain streets restrict large vehicles, so we match the truck to the block.

The good news is the layout. Most of Downey is flat, with gridded streets with driveways and room to park, which makes loading and truck access easier than in much of LA. That is a real advantage on move day, and it is why many Downey house moves go quickly. The things to plan for are the apartments and condos along the main boulevards, which bring stairs, elevator reservations, loading windows, and certificate-of-insurance rules through building management.

Traffic is the other factor. The main corridors like Firestone and Lakewood stay busy, so we time the move to avoid the worst of it. We line up the permits, the building access, and the right truck before the day, so nothing holds up the move once we arrive.