Photo: Kevin Scott
Gas stations being reborn as arts space? Sounds like the perfect idea for the Electrical Vehicle era! In the age of electric vehicles gas stations are lurching toward obsolescence and the land they use is becoming a widely distributed real estate development opportunity. The Mini Mart City Park, an art venue, community space, and publicly accessible park built on the site of a gas station dating back to the 1920s, which opened late last year in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle, shows how former gas stations can take on dramatically new lives, even with all their complicated environmental baggage. The front shop-like space is an art gallery and community meeting area, and an auxiliary building on the back of the lot holds accessible bathrooms and the site’s utilities. Between the buildings is a courtyard for another social space, and above, a bridge connects the roofs of the two buildings, creating a patio and viewing deck for the small passenger and cargo planes that still fly directly overhead on their approach into the adjacent airport. The formerly paved area around the gas station has been landscaped with native plants and is now a small pocket park for an increasingly residential neighborhood. With the number of disused and vacant gas stations on the rise, such projects clearly show the way forward.
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