Along Wealthy Street from Fuller west to College Avenue, there are old service/gas stations that have been converted to new uses. Some are restaurants (Sandmmans and Wealthy Street Station), one is a car wash/coffee shop, another was an ice cream shop (briefly), and the most modern of the group, a former Standard Oil Station, car repairs are still done on a part-time basis and you can see the imprint of the Standard Oil sign on the building. Once a part of a thriving business district, these service stations, abandoned when the neighborhood feel into decline, are now being repurposed. The decline has been reversed although there are still many buildings that are need of repair and new use and are now part of the thriving urban district that attracts young people to hip new restaurants, galleries, antique shops and forms a natural extension to the trendy downtown condominiums and apartments. There are challenges in this repurposing as exemplified by one owner who had a buyer for his station who backed out when they found out that the Historic Preservation Commission would not okay certain improvements they considered essential for the remodel.
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