Sisters Oil Company getting a facelift

Sisters Oil Company is remodeling the service station in downtown Sisters. photo by Tom Chace

The corner of Fir Street and Cascade Avenue, downtown Sisters, is just about the center of town. The Sisters Oil Company has occupied a third of this prime downtown real estate, just up the block from Sisters City Hall.

Now that corner is getting a facelift.

For the past few weeks, the shed used as an office and cigarette sales store in the back of the gas station property has been taken apart and put back together again.

It is, or shortly will be, a nice looking building to go with the soon-to-be- remodeled front part of the property.

John and Larry Schaefer owned the local oil company. Larry died earlier this summer and John has recently started to improve the property.

"Right now they have a permit to demolish the old pumps and build the new station building," said Neil Thompson, city planning director. "They will replace the six previous pumps with four new ones keeping the islands for the gas pumps in the same location as they were."

The property, and the improvements and facilities on it, will have to continue to be used for the same purposes as before the demolition.

This will also require that the newly constructed building be brought up to code, according to Thompson.

He said that when he was on a "busman's holiday" recently, he took photographs of commercial facilities in "other theme communities comparable to ours, those that had ordinances and commercial planning similar to our 1880s zoning requirements, to see how chain stores, such as McDonald's, service stations and other retail and offices were handled."

He said that, upon his return, he shared his pictures and ideas with Schaefer.

"If the oil company applies for canopies over the new pumps," Thompson said, "they will have to comply with our regulations and take on the look of the rest of our community."

One of the men working on the currently demolished site said he understood that there would be a newly constructed commercial building on the eastern boundary of the property, "with the possibility of apartments above."

Thompson did not deny that this was a possibility, "although nothing formal has come my way in a site plan nor requests for building permits."

"At the present time," he said, "they have permits to rebuild what was there on the gasoline service station locale with everything in the same site location. There is nothing officially requested at the present time to change the use of the property or even a portion of it."

If there is to be an additional building on that corner lot, or on the lot east of it, also owned by Schaefer, additional permits will need to be submitted and approved.

"Everything new will now have to conform to our 1880s building code ordinance," Thompson said.