I hear it’s worse for older ones. There’s an empty lot near me that was a Sunoco station from 1910 until a few years ago. I looked into what would be required to reclaim the space and was told that the soil is probably contaminated for a radius around the site (since gasoline probably leaked out at some point in the last 90 years). Nobody will buy it because it’s too expensive to clean up, and the gas station won’t clean it up because there’s no incentive to.
Maybe if it was a better neighbourhood it would be worth it to dig it up and build a condo on top, but until property rates increase, it’s just going to sit empty.
Yes, here in CA, there was a spate of closures when CA required gas stations to get rid of old leaky tanks. Clean-up costs were quite high. However, some tanks had been draining gas into the soil for decades, so they needed to be cleaned up.
There were two gas stations that went out of business right up the street from me for the reasons described by DrDeth. Not to mention that at the intersection, there were gas stations on three of the four corners. Now there is just one and that seems to meet the demand fine.
I work for an environmental consulting firm that used to do a lot of underground storage tank work. A number of our clients are owners of old gas stations. The cleanup bills on some of the old sites is well over $1 million. In Iowa, though, there is a state insurance fund that covers a lot of the tab, though.
A few yrs ago, a long abandoned highway gas station was sold to someone who wanted to start up a road side diner. The new buyers bought it, and then wound up finding out that, although they had been assured otherwise (in writing) the soil around the tanks was contaminated. The cost of clean up was huge, far more than what they had paid for the property. They wound up sueing the corporation who had sold them the property for the cost of clean up, lost business income due to the delay and legal costs. They won, and their award was more than adequate to cover the cost of building their diner.
They make a damn good chicken fried steak, if you are ever travelling between Red Deer, and Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada.
A few yrs ago, a long abandoned highway gas station was sold to someone who wanted to start up a road side diner. The new buyers bought it, and then wound up finding out that, although they had been assured otherwise (in writing) the soil around the tanks was contaminated. The cost of clean up was huge, far more than what they had paid for the property. They wound up sueing the corporation who had sold them the property for the cost of clean up, lost business income due to the delay and legal costs. They won, and their award was more than adequate to cover the cost of the clean up, and building their diner.
They make a damn good chicken fried steak, if you are ever travelling between Red Deer, and Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada.
My auto mechanic operates out of what used to be a Citgo station. They stopped selling gasoline about ten years ago and the pumps were removed. There are several former gas stations in this vicinity, most of them abandoned/fallow.
We had one in a nearby town that shut down because of vandalism.
Seriously. Every night after closing someone would come by and spray paint “I’ll Get You Bitch” or some such similar greeting, which the owner would have to clean up the next day.
The police were involved, and we could only assume this was some grudge against the owner. Eventually it was shut down…I guess the owner got scared or sick of the situation, which means the vandal won.
The remaining 1950s-1970s-era gas stations around here that are no longer selling gas are either the site of independent auto mechanics (in more affluent inner ring suburbs) or used car lots (in exurban areas where land is much cheaper). Old gas station buildings in areas closer to the city usually have a shorter lifespan than the used car lots on the urban fringe.
