The clock is ticking for the one fuel station on Alameda’s Bay Farm Island.
Come Nov. 30, the Unocal 76 station on Mecartney Highway close to its intersection with Island Drive at Harbor Bay Touchdown shopping center’s southwest nook will be part of different Bay Farm retailers which have bitten the mud lately, just like the CVS (previously Lengthy’s) drug retailer throughout the car parking zone.
Blame the shutdown of Bay Farm’s solely gas cease on the estimated $2 million price ticket to take away the station’s outdated single-walled underground fuel storage tank and substitute it with a state-mandated double-walled one — an environmental improve. That’s simply too excessive for station proprietor Simon Kim.
When Kim was first notified a number of years in the past that he wanted a double-walled tank, the associated fee was $1 million. He says on the time he thought he might deal with that.
“But the COVID (pandemic) hit, so prices started to rise up. So the average cost is about $2 million,” says Kim.
Kim additionally says he faces a possible tremendous of as much as $20,000 a day if the tank just isn’t changed by Dec. 31. Including to the headache for the impartial operator, who doesn’t personal the land his station sits on, is that he couldn’t make the choice to improve on his personal.
“So I cannot even control my situation because the landlord has to approve it and then 76 has to approve it,” says Kim.
So after 41 years Kim, 70, has determined to pack it in. A local of Seoul, South Korea, Kim emigrated to the USA in 1982 and started working at his uncle’s 5 fuel stations all through the East Bay, studying the commerce. In 1984, he took over one in all them — the then-Mobil station on the Bay Farm procuring middle. Since then it’s additionally flown the BP flag earlier than ultimately changing into a Unocal 76 station.
Along with promoting fuel, Kim has additionally emphasised routine upkeep for his prospects, particularly the aged. He says he’s involved about the place they’ll go sooner or later.
“They need kind of little, small touches,” similar to checking the oil and tire strain, he stated. “I’m really sorry for the elderly persons, my dear customers.”
Moreover the tank substitute challenge, Kim says one other menace to his enterprise is that at this time’s vehicles don’t break as a lot and have much more warning programs indicating when a restore must be made.
“Every time tire pressure gets lower, a light comes on. And oil changes too. Twenty years ago we didn’t have those kind of fancy monitoring systems,” says Kim.
The soon-to-be-retired Kim plans to take a effectively deserved trip again to South Korea after closing up store to test in with buddies and kin he hasn’t seen in over 25 years — a long-overdue journey his spouse says he’s been “dragging his feet on.”
Over time Kim’s Unocal 76 has had its share of memorable moments. Maybe probably the most noteworthy was when the station bought a $93 million profitable California lottery ticket in 2016 to then-executive assistant Judy Taylor on a “quick pick” ticket.
Kim says Taylor got here in after filling up and had a few bucks in change. Not a daily lottery participant, she determined to purchase a fast decide ticket. The remaining is historical past. Retailers who promote tickets additionally get a share of the winnings, and Kim’s take was $465,000. The place Taylor is now’s anybody’s guess. She opted for the lump-sum payout and went residence with a cool $52 million after taxes.
Kim celebrated the win by handing out free $1 fast decide tickets to his prospects. As typically occurs with big-win lottery ticket buy shops, Kim’s Unocal developed a fame as being “lucky.”
Bay Farm resident Rob Sloan, a retired U.S. and world historical past highschool trainer, says he’s been coming to the station since 1989 and that the closure shall be tough. He says he drops in each time he wants a fill-up and that the considered driving over the bridge to the next-nearest station on Alameda’s fundamental island just isn’t one he desires to ponder in the meanwhile.
Sloan says he’ll miss not simply the service at Bay Farm Island’s solely fuel station however different points of the fill-up expertise — just like the “joy of talking to him (Kim) about the Lunar New Year,” conversations sparked by calendars Kim supplied in previous years.
“It’s part of my routine,” says Sloan. “When you separate from a job or situation it’s always going to be bittersweet.”
Ever the historical past trainer, Sloan summed up his emotions about his native fuel station going the best way of the woolly mammoth thusly: “As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, ‘There’s nothing permanent except change.’ ”
