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Business owners fuel gas station renovations
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Esso, Sinclair and Standard Oil are names that have long disappeared from America’s highways, but a few service stations of old have survived into the 21st century under new names and with new purposes.
One need look no farther than Spring Street in downtown Charleston to find that even flowers can spring from old gasoline pumps.
Tiger Lily Florist at 131 Spring St. was a downtown renovation project that set the stage for others in the area and complemented the general turnaround of a once-deteriorating neighborhood that is shifting back into high gear.
Manny and Clara Gonzales, owners of the flower shop, were looking for a building they could own rather than lease and were drawn to the Cannonborough neighborhood, where revitalization had begun with a fervor.
The early 20th century gas station with art deco charm, including a cupola and decorative cornices, caught Manny’s eye every time he passed the abandoned site. He began to consider renovating the building and joining the neighborhood rehabilitation project.
“The numbers worked, the building worked out perfectly, it was on the peninsula where we wanted to be, but Clara and I thought it was something more than that, that we were part of something special,” Gonzales said.
He learned that the state Department of Health and Environmental Control had mostly cleaned up the site and that the building was pre-approved for a state-sponsored Superb Fund of up to $1 million if there were any future problems with contamination.
Still, the building was filthy and Gonzales had reservations.
“This was a major move for us, financially,” Gonzales said. “We don’t have a big corporation backing us. We put everything we had into it, so it was critical we made sure we weren’t vulnerable to losing it all. Everyone we talked to said, ‘You need to keep away from that thing. It’s a mess.’”
Gonzales was still encouraged. He had an engineer check the building over.
“I asked him if this thing was going to go with the next blow, and he said ‘This building isn’t going anywhere. They just don’t make buildings like this anymore,’” Gonzales said.
Renovations and tax cuts
The couple bought the building in 2003 and spent $450,000 on renovations, which were led by Goff-D’Antonio Associates. The local firm added 3,000 square feet to the back of the L-shaped, stucco-over-masonry structure and kept its facade intact, including a wide arch that once marked the entrance to the station’s service bays.
“It was a lot of money, but the purchase of the building and the cost of renovating it is the same as what we were paying in rent,” Gonzales said.
The city’s renewal community tax incentive was another reason Gonzales went ahead with the project.
The program, launched by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Renewal to help attract businesses to depressed areas, saves Gonzales about $15,000 in taxes a year for 10 years. He will also save capital gains taxes if he ever sells the building.
“As a small business, you have to leverage every opportunity you possibly can find,” Gonzales said.
There was something else about the old gas station that hadn’t changed: It was on a very lucrative corner.
“Before the Crosstown came, this was an oasis of support for cars coming from New York to Miami,” Gonzales said.
The Crosstown route cut through the neighborhood and shifted traffic patterns for a while, but with revitalization now focused on the area, new businesses are flocking back.
“I know we’re just a page in the history of this building,” Gonzales said. “It’s going to last for a long time.”
Staying downtown
Architect Sandy Byers was also looking for office space to own when he noticed another abandoned gas station in Cannonboro, just across the street from Tiger Lily.
“I had always had my office downtown and then I decided I wanted an investment,” Byers said. “I wanted something unique. I wanted to bring something back to use.”
The former Sinclair Oil station he bought in January 2005 was built sometime between 1925 and 1935, according to records from the S.C. Department of Archives and History.
“It was all cleaned up before I got involved,” Byers said. “It already had a DHEC sign-off. I probably would have had reservations if the environmental work had not been done.”
Byers Design Group moved into the space in November 2005 after what the architect called a “reusable renovation.”
“It wasn’t destroying the integrity of the original architecture,” Byers said.
The building retains its original facade, the original doors over the service bays and a terracotta parapet around the roof. The canopied drive next to the gas pumps has been enclosed with glass and is now a conference room, and the bathrooms have been painted Sinclair green to complement pieces of the remaining tile on the walls.
Byers has collected a few pieces of Sinclair Oil memorabilia, including framed posters of Sinclair’s mascot, Dino the Dinosaur. Interior refurbishing was done with materials that complement the period of the building, including a glass block wall.
Like Gonzales, Byers likes the fact that his office is now part of an urban revitalization that is spreading like wildfire from block to block.
“I thought it would be a good time to invest in the area, because down the road it would be an up-and-coming area,” he said. “I also wanted the office to be unique. I didn’t want to go to a more modern office building and buy a condo.”
Summerville stations get refurbished
While the old gas stations in downtown Charleston have found new identities on high traffic thoroughfares, service stations on small town streets have also been refurbished.
In Summerville, neighboring service stations whose gas pumps went dry long ago are now home to cleaner businesses.
Kelly Lax runs The Green Gator, a gift shop and T-shirt store in an old gas station on Cedar Street. Newspaper advertisements from the 1920s that feature the store lead Lax to believe it might date from 1917. Her parents bought the building after the gas pumps were taken out in 1995.
“I love my gas station,” Lax said. “It’s kind of funny, because when I was in high school I used to get gas here and they would put it on my dad’s bill. We tried to save as much of the original building as we could.”
Not far away at the corner of Cedar Street and East Richardson Avenue, Laura Jones runs Manor House Interiors in a renovated gas station that she and her mother own. Jones’ husband, Neyle Jones, spent a summer doing much of the renovation work and discovering an old well beneath the brick floor.
“It turned out the old gas tanks were actually underneath the street in the (Department of Transportation’s) right-of-way, so they were really responsible for them,” Jones said. “The property got a clean bill of health, so there’s no problems at all from the old gas station as far as we’re aware of today.”
Hank D’Antonio, a principal in Goff-D’Antonio, the firm that renovated the Tiger Lily building, said old gas stations generally can be adapted to new uses.
“Some have environmental problems, some don’t,” D’Antonio said. “All these buildings have an audience if they can find the right use. I think certainly there are people who can envision that these kinds of buildings can be something more than what they were.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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