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New Life for Long-Vacant Dearborn Gas Station?

Built in 1931 and vacant since 1997, this gas station at Cherry Hill and Military could be razed for a single-story office medical building.

Built in 1931 and vacant since 1997, this gas station at Cherry Hill and Military could be razed for a single-story office building.

A development plan to transform a long-vacant service station at the corner of Military and Cherry into a single story medical office building will soon make its way before Dearborn City Council.

 

Property owner Adel O. Seifeddine, along with his architect, Joseph A. Guido, will be asking Council members to approve a resolution by the Dearborn Plan Commission to rezone the property from residential to a business office area. The Plan Commission earlier this month unanimously voted to approve the request by Guido and Seifeddine to rezone the property at 131 S. Military (lots 23-27), in what is known in the City’s books as Long’s River Rouge Park subdivision.

 

While the rezoning doesn’t mean construction is imminent, it is a step in the right direction to perhaps have this long-vacant corner cleaned up with a building that could tastefully fit into the existing neighborhood.

 

The property, the longtime home to a gas station and service garage, has been vacant since October 1997.

 

The original zoning for the building – a local business district – was established in 1931, which paved the way for a gas station to be built at the corner in the same year.

 

In 1951, the city rezoned the property to Residential A (One family residential district) but the station was allowed to remain (grandfathered usage) because it was operating long before the rezoning of the property took place.

 

The gas station closed in October 1997 and was left vacant. Since that time several requests have come before the City of Dearborn to have the property rezoned to allow either a medical building or a neighborhood coffee shop. Area residents, however, wanted a residential home to be built at that corner and convinced city leaders to turn those business requests down. But finding someone to purchase the property for several hundred thousand dollars, then pay to have the building razed, the site cleaned and then finally building a home on the property was simply beyond the reach of most homebuyers so the station sat vacant.

 

The earlier rejected requests are interesting because the existing land use at the intersection of Cherry Hill and Military consist of three of non-residential uses that all abut residential homes. There is a church on the northeast corner, a medical parking lot at the southwest corner and a medical building (DDS) at the northwest corner. The vacant gas station sits at the southeast corner.

 

With this new proposal now headed to City Council, a larger group of area residents, some who concede to being “tired” looking at the vacant gas station, now support the current development plan for the site.

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Just The Facts

    Would be nice to get rid of the eyesore for sure. A minor sticking point might be the expected size of the medical practice and the potential traffic increases for the intersection and along both Cherry Hill and Military. Probably won’t be a problem.

    In connection with that neighborhood and the traffic, I wonder if there’s any way to increase the absurdly low speed limit along Military between Cherry Hill and Outer Drive. 25 mph is artificially low, you almost have to ride the brake. It seems a natural 35 mph stretch.

  • LX

    Much agreed. It is time for this corner to move on and I really don’t see how surrounding residents would be able to object to a medical office on that corner.

    It is somewhat amazing that this place has been vacant since 1997. Time goes by quickly.

    Then again, it was November 1997 when Inca Computers announced they were opening in Dearborn only to close shortly after. I guess the irony is that the City Officials will live with this eyesore but not enforce the ordinance that requires Newman to remove the Inca sign on Michigan Avenue for the past 11 years.

  • Donna Hay

    LX, don’t you think that as long as those residents continue sticking together they will end up getting just what they want on this corner. As far as objecting to a medical office I would think that would depend on the number of parking spaces available. If there wasn’t enough parking the patients would be parking in front of their homes.

  • http://www.networkdearborn.com Dave Bowman

    Wasn’t there going to be a coffee house here a couple of years back? Can’t remember the details but I think it had something to do with too many Dearborn hoops to jump through and the entrepreneurs moved on to an outlying suburb…

  • LX

    Donna,

    I suppose parking might be a question. I haven’t seen the proposed plans. However, don’t you think this would be addressed in the planning stage or am I just extending too much credit for such things?

  • lenny

    So happy to see that something is going to happen on that corner. It has been abandoned too long, lets get it back on the tax rolls, and spruce up the neighborhood, unless Big Jack and his cronies in the bldg. dept. put too many stipulations on the builder again. Put the speed limit at 30, this might help the congestion, and get the traffic moving safely again.

  • Donna Hay

    LX, I think you are giving out way too much credit. Of course this is just my opinion. We’ll just have to wait and see what is proposed at the council meeting.

  • Michael D. Albano

    Dave Bowman,

    Yes a few years back my next door neighbors tried to put a small coffee house in that location. According to neighbor Jim Smith the city inspectors came out and met with him and the owner. The inspectors said that to bring up the building to code the city expected the building owner to put $100,000 into the building. The inspector said since it was zoned residential that there was no guarantee that the HOA in that subdivision would allow the coffee house. Under those circumstances, I don’t blame the owner and Jim for bowing out and choosing another location that sadly was out of Dearborn.

    The neighbors who are die-hard City of Dearborn supporters instead put their coffee house in a small booth of a parking lot on Telegraph, I believe near Sibley in Brownstown or Woodhaven. An even sadder part of this story is that everyone I talk to says their coffee hut serves coffee that is equal to or better than Starbucks and other major chains and they do it for a far more reasonable price.

    Either way, I am glad to see that hopefully we will possibly having a new business in that location that has been idle for so long.

  • http://www.networkdearborn.com Dave Bowman

    How great would a convenient, locally-owned coffee spot have been there! Right on the way to work… On the other hand, perhaps this decision saved me hundreds of dollars over the long haul :)

  • LX

    Oh, com’on now, you’d make that back on one of those squares.

    ;)

  • Michael D. Albano

    Other than LX, I’d heard that Dave Bowman was one of the richest men in the city so it’s a shame some of your hard earned capital couldn’t have been spent there.

  • http://www.networkdearborn.com Dave Bowman

    Michael, you’re the unwitting victim of a vicious rumor.

  • LX

    Would you two please be quiet? I lost track of my count and have to start over.

  • Michael D. Albano

    No problem LX. You da boss, you da boss and welcome back.

  • LX

    Okay, now you really are the unwitting victim of a vicious rumor.

  • confused

    short memories for the aging posters on this site,

    let’s see, Little Cafe-GONE, Au-Bon-Pon, GONE…but sure, put another coffee shop there!

    Because Starbucks, Panera and tim hortons are so inconvienent????

    Support the so-called progress and have it torn down……

  • Michael D. Albano

    Confused,

    Perhaps you are correct in your assessment of a coffee shop there, but I think that maybe in this dire ecomony, with Dearborn losing so much business, maybe, just maybe people are willing to take that risk. The site has been vacant for so long that maybe something is better than nothing.

    We’re at the point now most everywhere, especially in DTWD in that I don’t think many would complain if any new business opened up down there as well.

    I could be mistaken, but should a tear down happen on the Military and Cherry Hill site, the existing property owner would be responsible for that and a rebuild. This could bring much needed taxes to our ovestrapped city. Perhaps the site owner and new business owners would have far more to lose at a coffee shop in that location than the risk to the city.

  • Donna Hay

    Your right Michael, but first you have to get them to pay the taxes and maybe even the water bill.

  • Michael D. Albano

    Right on Donna. I’m assuming you’re referring to BK. But is this lot owner also delinquent in their taxes and water bill?

  • Donna Hay

    I was sort of thinking about everyone who owns property in the city and owes money Michael. I figured that every little bit would help.

  • LX

    Just for giggles I did some looking at 131 S. Military.

    As far as I can tell, the property last known as South Military Service is good to go.

    Kassem Karaali & Anwar Reda’s corporation Karalli, Inc. as of July 15, 1997 under the assumed name South Military Service, Anwar Reda President ’92, held the last business activity of record. The 6000-gallon tank that was installed April 14, 1969 was removed from ground June 21, 1994.

    Good luck with whatever the neighborhood decides.

  • LX

    Ooops. My mistake with the typo. Karaali, Inc. is missing an ‘a’ and gained an ‘l’ above.

  • http://www.kielbasakings.com Kevin

    With all the vacant medical square footage currently available in the city, how can building more space justify a change in zoning for that corner? I agree with all the ‘cafes’ that have shuttered, building another one would not make sense at all. How much say will the neighbors/neighborhood association have in the future decisions?

  • Barnaby Jones

    Since so many businesses are going down the tubes in west dearborn, they could put in a store selling clown suits there as far as I am concerned. Something, anything would be better than having nothing there for well over a decade.

  • George Kaminski

    Barnaby, a little bit of ironic humor is good for the soul. Let me add to it. If the proposed store at this location is selling clown outfits let’s make sure that our overpaid, underworked and uncreative mayor and council spend at least what we overpay them to go down to that store and buy full-fledged clown outfits.

    They can wear these outfits at all council meetings and city functions so we can all ID them for what they have become, bozos!

  • Local Neighbor

    As someone knowlegeable about what is planned and what has been shot down in the past, I thought I might set the record straight. Several years ago, a convenience store was proposed for the site and rejected by the neighbors because of the traffic and the characters it might bring into the neighborhood which is on the route to several schools. The most recent coffee shop idea was printed in the paper, but was never approved by the owners or presented to the city. The most recent proposal, which has resulted in the property being rezoned, is for a medical building with 2900 square feet for two separate offices. The preliminary architect’s rendering calls for 16 off-street parking spaces. While neighbors would probably still prefer a residential house on the site, they have become tired of waiting and staring at the abandoned gas station. Having been worn down over the past decade, they accepted the idea of the medical building, especially given that the owner and architect took into consideration the concerns of the neighbors. This has been discussed at meetings of the neighborhood association and the association and several neighbors voiced their opinions and concerns when the matter was before the zoning board. The idea was raised that there are many vacant offices in the city which would serve as medical offices, so why build new ones. However, that is the owner’s worry, not the neighborhood’s. An attractive, nicely landscaped new facility that fits in with the neighborhood, even if vacant, is preferable to the delapidated structure and unkept grounds that are there now.

    Kindly check your information before you perpetuate rumors.

  • Tom

    George,

    You do realize that it wouldn’t be the first time a Dearborn mayor masqueraded as a clown?

    http://www.pressandguide.com/
    stories/010704/sup_20040107008.shtml

  • George Kaminski

    Yes, but clowns like Orville Hubbard were hardly fools like our current leaders.
    Even though he was controversial, he got things done with our without the councils help.

  • emanon

    The coffee shop is called Bear Claw & there’s one in Westland or Canton…damn shame that didn’t pan out, but this town is not freindly to the independent buisness owner.