Canyon Gas Station Sale Pending

After being on the market for a year, the historic Canyon Service Station on Entrada Drive has an accepted offer. Also included in the sale is a 100-year-old house, one of the last remaining homes of the Marquez family, the original owners of the Rancho Boca de Santa Monica land grant. ‘I don’t know yet when escrow will close,’ said Monica Queen, a daughter of Angelina Marquez Olivera, who lives in the two-bedroom house. The sale appears related to settling Olivera’s estate following her death in 2002. While Queen would not say who offered to buy the two structures on the 17,000-sq.-ft. lot or how much they offered to pay, it is believed to be close to the $2.3 million asking price. While the property is zoned R-1, there has been a conditional use permit since 1925 for the gas station, which is leased out at $3,000 a month, to operate in this residential neighborhood. Brian Clark, who operates the station, is not happy about the pending sale. ‘I feel betrayed,’ said Clark, who had been in negotiation with the family, along with local realtor Frank Langen, to purchase the property on behalf of the community, a proposal the two men began working on when the property came on the market last fall. ‘We made them a full price offer,’ Clark said. ‘I thought we had a deal. They seemed really happy about the idea of preserving the gas station and maybe turning the house into a museum. Then two days later there are workers here taking soil samples to see if the gas tanks are leaking. That’s how I found out they had sold the property to someone else.’ Clark, who has had a lease on the distinctive orange-and-white station since 1996, said that when he found out about the pending sale last Saturday he was disappointed to hear that ‘whoever is buying the lot plans to develop it and either tear down or relocate the gas station. But where is it going to go? It’s not like you can just plant it somewhere.’ The news of the pending sale came at a glum time for Clark, who had lovingly restored the station, the oldest full-service station in Los Angeles. After battling the city and some neighbors for five years over the renewal of his conditional use permit, Clark was informed by L.A.’ s Department of Building and Safety on Monday that he would no longer be permitted to detail cars. While acknowledging that there are still zoning and variance issues to be resolved, Clark is sure a community buy-out of the property would have been the best way to go. ‘We could have made it work. But it appears we were too late,’ said Clark, who is now preparing to shut down the station in the next few weeks.