The formerly-76, once-to-be-converted-to-Arco gas station on the east side of Fauntleroy/Alaska is finally tidier tonight. We’d been looking into the site’s status for three weeks, as WSB’ers continued sending notes asking what we knew about it, as trash and junk continued to accumulate following its sudden closure months ago. We took this photo (and others showing trash/junk around the site) three weeks ago:
That was shortly after a complaint had been filed with the city. The city’s log shows that in the meantime, the site was inspected, found to be in violation, and a warning was issued – clean up by August 14th. Looks so far like they have met that deadline. But what about the station itself?
We had reported back in February that it was being converted to an Arco station. Then the work stalled – the station stopped pumping gas – and the store closed. When we inquired with Arco, a spokesperson told us that “for reasons we don’t know” the conversion never moved forward, and Arco doesn’t “anticipate it ever being converted.” However, the spokesperson made it clear that the site is not owned by Arco, but instead by an area entrepreneur, and even gave us his name and number. Took us a while to reach owner Brandon Kim, but WSB contributor Katie Meyer talked with him by phone yesterday. Asked if the station would reopen, he replied, “Not really,” and told her that he believed a bank would be taking it over. That’s all the comment he had; online records do not indicate any sort of a sale or foreclosure at this point, but we’ll keep an eye out.
SIDE NOTE: The gas station on the west side of the intersection is no longer on the market – we had reported the listing in February, and while the listing was active less than two weeks ago (here’s a cached version). So far, we can’t tell if it was sold, or just de-listed.
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