Last fall, The Real Deal reported that the Mobil station on Avenue C and East Houston been sold to a brokerage firm for $8 million.
Existing zoning allows for 43,000 square feet of residential development on the parcel, which has 120 feet of frontage on Houston Street, according to The Real Deal.
We all figured the station would be a goner soon enough.
Apparently not that soon.
The Times had a piece yesterday titled Manhattan's Vanishing Gas Stations. The piece offered a few more details on what's next here.... and when.
[A] rental building will rise on the site when the station’s lease expires in two years, according to HPNY, a development firm that is a partner in the project.
The 12-story rental building will encompass 43,000 square feet of apartments, as well as 6,000 square feet of ground-floor stores, which will wrap three sides, HPNY said.
So two more years here.
And it is not your imagination that gas stations are disappearing around the city.
In October, there were 117 stations in Manhattan, down from 207 in 2004, or a 44 percent decrease, according to the city’s Bureau of Fire Prevention. The city as a whole has 35 percent fewer stations than it did a decade ago, according to the data.
And I'll repeat this from a previous post:
Now I'm not lamenting the loss of gas stations... I don't have a car... and, even with an occasional rental, have never used either East Village gas station... I'll echo the sentiments of Jeremiah Moss on the matter: "And while I'm not a fan of oil, I like gas stations for their smudgy, blue-collar existence, and their vanishing from the face of Manhattan is worth noting."
Previously on EV Grieve:
How much longer will the East Village have gas stations?
The East Village will soon be down to 1 gas station
The Mobil on Avenue C is still going strong — for now
4 comments:
They can't vanish too much. Cabs still need gas to work.
I love me some good, grimey gas-pump-jockey nostalgia too, a la "How To Marry a Millionaire" but that is a rather silly point.
The point is that the gas stations are USEFUL businesses and highly necessary for those who DO have cars...and, obviously, the last thing we need are more ugly "luxury" apartment buildings.
I like having a gas station close by, and the guys that work here are cool, but the gas price here is usually painful even for manhattan. Strictly for the emergency 2 or 3 gallons till I am somewhere cheaper.
Good Riddens.
And mixed use residential buildings with ground floor commercial spaces brings in wayyy more revenue and benefit the community much more than a gas station.
The city should force the yellow cab company to utilize electric vehicles as was originally planned. This was eventually going to happen with taxi of tomorrow, likely within the decade.
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