Gas Station Torn Down to Make Room for ... Substandard Parking Lot?

We've walked by this corner lot of Main and Grand streets inumerable times since Steve's Auto Repair was demolished last April. The sign that once marked the North End Gateway Revitalization project is gone and it appears a substandard parking lot has sprung up where this former auto body and gas station once stood.

Looks like plans for health center offices have vanished. Last April, the mayor announced the building, built in 1930, was being razed to make room for the new Community Health Center's administrative offices in the city's North End.

This is a brownfields site as identified by the city's Downtown Gateway Study. The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection conducted testing at the site and discovered a large amount of gasoline in the soil and groundwater.

 is paid for the razing and the cleanup, which includes shipping the scrapped building materials, including polychlorinated biphenyl and asbestos, "out of state to a landfill in Ohio or some other midwestern state," according to .

Less than a year later, the parking departement has sunk meters into the ground and gas tanks are still located underground. In fact, pump islands minus the pumps are still there — with big red metal barriers still standing.

The isn't property paved over, with uneven ground and individual parking spaces not marked. It must be difficult to maintain one's footing on the gravel and it costs $.75 an hour to park there.

When the building design is complete, director of the planning, conservation and development department Bill Warner said last April, "It'll go before the design and review board and be built up close to the street like other Main Street businesses and have retail on the ground floor."

"This site will go from an eyesore to another gem on Main Street in Middletown," Drew said. "It's one more brick in the beautiful building that is Main Street."

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