The Demise of Citgo #11799145, Riverview, Michigan

 

This post will look at retail in Riverview, Wayne County, MI.
 
Citgo #11799145
12647 Pennsylvania Road, Riverview, MI
Driving distance and time from downtown Detroit: 16.6 miles, approx. 25 minutes
 
This gas station's story started in 1955, as that was when a Mobil gas station opened at the southeast corner of Pennsylvania and Quarry Roads. The address? 12647 Pennsylvania Road. Competing with it across Quarry Road was Kreger's (and later Chuck's) Standard at 12705 Pennsylvania Road. That station disappeared without fanfare in the late 1970s (not even being given the chance to convert to Amoco), with a Lawson's convenience store (later converted to Dairy Mart and currently Circle K) built on the site in 1980.

As for the Mobil, it had quietly become a Union 76 by the early 1980s. In 1997, the station flipped to Citgo under a 10-year contract, which ended in 2007 with another switch to Valero (which was beginning to expand into Michigan around that time) under a new 10-year contract. Then that contract lapsed in 2017, and the station reverted back to Citgo.

It remained a Citgo until...something abrupt happened on May 1, 2020.
 
On that day, this piece of yellow paper was taped onto the door of the attached L&S Mart convenience store by the city of Riverview, indicating that the station, by then being run by Yossef Salih-Abdo Hassan, had been operating without a business license since 2018 and was thus forced to close.

At that point, the station was already clearly falling apart - as seen above, literally. A canopy panel fell down to reveal what was underneath - Citgo's previous four-strip canopy design from the 2000's, which was visible for the first time since 2007.
 
The air machine was never even disabled following the station's closure, and of course, that didn't stop customers (including, unfortunately, myself) from attempting to use it, only to realize that all the machine did by this point was suck their poor money in, never to come out.

Even the L&S Mart was drabby towards the end, as the interior photos on this site show.

One month later, the canopy and convenience store sign were completely debranded, painted over in a drab gray. The road sign would soon come down, as a sign of what was to come.

Come September, demolition work was officially underway. The canopy quickly vanished from the landscape, but as of the last time I was at this intersection, the convenience store building was still standing. Maybe that too will be flattened eventually?

We hope you enjoyed this quick story about the demise of a poorly-run, poorly-maintained gas station. Until next time....

Location: 12647 Pennsylvania Rd, Riverview, MI 48193, USA

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