With the opening of Interstate 95 well to the east, Allendale's once thriving commercial roadside strip lost most of its customer base. As the traffic slowed to a trickle, fortune's waned -- the area's classic Holiday Inn closed first and then incredibly the Howard Johnson's hung on until 1978. By the middle 1980s, Allendale no longer even merited an entry for services in AAA's Tourbooks.

At some point the non-standard Motor Lodge was demolished, but the Restaurant found new usefulness as a bookstore for USC's Allendale campus.