Industry
Part of Gas Station Preservation: How It Works
Who to Contact About Reusing Old Filling Stations
Rather than looking for gas station preservation companies, start with tank programs, redevelopment offices and owners when researching old filling stations.
What to take away
- The people who know these sites best work in state environmental programs and local redevelopment, not tourism.
- Ask about a specific site rather than for general help. Specific questions get answered.
- Owners of adapted stations are the most generous source there is, and the easiest to reach.
- Nobody will take you onto a closed site. Do not ask them to.
Filling stations sit in an unusual gap. Gas station preservation companies work on the buildings — the signs, canopies and façades — and not on the tank and cleanup files, which sit with regulators. Tourism has barely noticed these sites at all. They are architecture, so preservation people care about them, and they are regulated sites, so environmental agencies hold most of the records.
That means the good contacts are in offices, and reaching them is easier than it sounds.
State tank programs hold the records
Federal rules for underground tanks — RCRA Subtitle I and the regulations at 40 CFR Part 280 — are largely implemented by the states, and those state offices know which sites in a county have been closed, cleaned or are still open cases.
The Environmental Protection Agency maintains a directory of state underground storage tank programs, which is the fastest route to the right office. Tank records — registrations, closures and cleanup reports — are often public, and staff are used to inquiries from prospective buyers. Ask for them in writing under your state's open records law, one site at a time, and the office will tell you what can and cannot be released.
For a visitor rather than a buyer, the useful question is narrower: which sites in this area have been through the program and been reused. That produces a list of exactly the places worth visiting.
Redevelopment people know what is happening next
The other half of the picture is who is putting these sites back into use.
The EPA's Brownfields Program supports the assessment and reuse of properties whose redevelopment is complicated by contamination, and small former filling stations are a classic case. State, county and city agencies administer much of this work, and their coordinators know every stalled and completed project in their area.
They are also usually pleased to talk about the successes, since demonstrating them is part of the job.
The other useful people
- Owners of adapted stations.The single best source. They dealt with the tanks, the agency and the building, and most will tell you the whole story over a coffee.
- State Historic Preservation Offices, usually shortened to SHPO, for what is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and what is eligible for it.
- County historical societies, for photographs of the site when it was trading.
- Local historians of the highway, who usually know which brand was where and when.
- Environmental consultants, occasionally, and usually only if a personal connection exists.
How to ask
One specific question, your dates, and what you are doing. Name the site if you have one. Offer to come at a time that suits them.
Do not ask anybody to let you onto a closed site. It puts them in a difficult position, and the answer is no for reasons that are about liability rather than unfriendliness.
What good looks like
A useful contact can tell you what happened to the tanks, when the site was cleaned, what the building was, and what it is now. They will also say plainly when something is not known.
Somebody who tells you a derelict site is perfectly safe to wander around is not a good contact, whatever else they know.
Fitting it together
Two or three emails a couple of weeks ahead will usually produce one conversation and a list of sites. That is a better trip than any amount of driving around looking.
If you are planning a trip around one of these sites, the packing list covers the practical side of the day. Knowing what the preservation work actually involves will make the conversations far more productive.
