Business & Tech
After Changing Hands, No New Proposals to Refuel Former Gas Station
The dilapidated gas station on San Bruno Avenue was going to be turned into a taqueria, but the proposal never moved forward.
The property on San Bruno Avenue West near Huntington Avenue that used to be a gas station fits right in with some of the other properties at the busy downtown intersection.
Fenced off. Dilapidated. Undeveloped. This pretty much describes a group of properties there that have sat vacant for years.
But the former gas station at 170 San Bruno Avenue has caught some people’s attention most recently.
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The gasoline tanks were removed years ago, but the shell of the gas station building still remains, although about half of the façade is now plastered with plywood and scribbles of graffiti.
A fence surrounds the property, but part of the fence looks to be recently pried open, this reporter observed on a recent visit to the location.
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According to records, it used to be a 76 gas station and at one point refiner Tosco Corp. had owned the property. But Tosco got gobbled up in the ConocoPhillips merger of 2002, and not too much has been known about the property since then. The owner now listed in county records is Double AA Corp., a Northern California fuel supplier, which has an address in South San Francisco. Multiple calls for comment were made to Double AA, but no one with the company responded.
A few years ago, someone submitted a proposal to re-use the existing building there as a taqueria, said Aaron Aknin, the city’s community development director. However, that project was later withdrawn and it never moved forward.
It is now believed that the San Mateo County Environmental Health Department is currently requiring monitoring of the site for possible contamination, an issue that the owner of the vacant property adjacent to it is concerned about.
“If we were to consider developing, it would be considered an eyesore,” said Joe Welch Jr. of San Bruno Investment Co., the company run by real estate tycoon Joe Welch and his sons. “You’d probably have to get 76 to clean it up, but who knows when that’s going to happen?”
The property is also a key part of the city’s downtown transit corridor plan, which is expected to bring more traffic and development to the area following the completion of the grade separation project. But no one else has submitted an application to develop the site, Aknin said.
Location: 170 San Bruno Avenue West
Owner: Double AA Corporation
Assessed value of property: $570,863
Who to contact: Deno Milano, San Mateo County Groundwater Protection Program, 650-372-6292, dmilano@co.sanmateo.ca.us; Double AA Corporation, 650-589-7722.
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