This old Shell station is being ripped up.
Who’s noticed the bulldozers ripping things up on Whyte Avenue at 100 Street?
We did. The disappearance of Platz Shell Service (9950 82 Avenue) was reported by the edmontonian one week ago. After closing up the station a final time, June 15, the Platz crew packed up the service side of things and headed over to the Ottewell neighbourhood…and that leaves a gas station to be disposed of.
Shirley Lowe, president of the Old Strathcona Business Association is waiting to see what’s going to happen to the site.
This lot at 105 and Whyte has been empty for a decade. (Thx JP!)
Whyte Avenue already has an empty lot. The contaminated Esso site at Whyte and 105 Street is now in its second decade of vacancy.
In an e-mail, Lowe says the fate of Whyte and 100 Street remains to be seen.
“How badly contaminated is this (Platz location) and does Shell care?”
“Is the remediation requirement a residential standard?” she asks. “If so, this can be rezoned.”
Underground fuel tanks need to be dug up.
The site remains under ownership of Shell Canada Limited, and there are no solid plans for the property.
Meanwhile, work has begun on removing the station’s underground fuel tanks.
Senior Communications Representative, Jackie Panera, tells the edmontonian they don’t know what the remedy for the abandoned gas station is.
“We are still determining the long-term future of the site and if we are going to sell the property,” Panera writes in an e-mail. “Since we have not determined what we are going to do long-term with the property, we don’t have timelines to share with you today on remediation plans.”
The Shell rep notes the company is monitoring its tanks for leakage during the removal process, as per Alberta Environment requirements.
So, just to recap: Shell is deciding whether they’ll build anew or sell the property. For the moment though, it looks like people living and visiting Old Strathcona may want to get used to looking at another empty lot.
The photo credit for the old ESSO site is incorrect: that lot is located at 105th Street and Whyte Avenue, not 99th Street.
Well-played, sir. Thanks for the heads up! We’ll change it asap.
I was just looking into the future and predicting what will happen to the Esso at 99th Street.
Or not.
Good eye. (And thanks for reading!)
I am enjoying your posts! The brownfields on Whyte are something that will, unfortunately, stick around for a while. The old ESSO lot on 105/82 in particular is a sore spot, considering the primo location it occupies. If only we knew about proper containment seventy years ago…we might have had remediation quicker than the decades they’ve predicted for that chunk of land.
I know the owner of this shell station. The site is not contaminated.
Perhaps, if you did your homework, and spoke to the owner, you could get the story right. He will tell you all the details. If you have the energy to put up the web-site,and, make ungrounded statements with no research…..you know what you should do to fix it!
Hi JO,
thanks for reading.
You know, maybe we are due for some follow-up on this. Maybe even a wider story on actual contaminated sites in Edmonton. There are questions in this story about checking into whether or not this particular station (at Whyte and 100 Street) is contaminated, but we don’t say it IS contaminated.
The other gas station on Whyte (at 105 Street) is sadly a long-time blight on the neighbourhood.
Contaminated sites are an issue the City is starting to take more seriously (perhaps because so many “brownfields” are found in cities across the country) and the first report of this task force: http://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/city_organization/contaminated-gas-stations-task.aspx might be a good place to really kick off this community conversation.