A series of closed gas stations in the Quad Cities region appear to be a step closer to reopening.
The Davenport City Council on Wednesday night, Jan. 10, approved liquor licenses for nine closed Sinclair gas stations. All of those stations – which were former Kwik Shop stations that had switched over to Sinclair – abruptly closed their doors for business last fall after bankruptcy proceedings.
The council’s vote Wednesday night was unanimous to approve new license/owner Class B beer licenses for the nine closed sites in Davenport. There were no public or council comments made about the request for liquor licenses during the meeting. (That meeting can be viewed on video here.)
The vote means the sites will be able to legally sell beer within the next week or so, said Davenport Alderman Kyle Gripp, At-large.
However, Mr. Gripp told the QCBJ that he doesn’t know when the nine closed stations may reopen. He referred questions on the reopening status of the stations to LPT Retail Management Services, which is a Texas-based company that manages and operates thousands of stores in the retail sector across the U.S.
Mr. Gripp said LPT has been hired by the stations’ new owners. (Calls to Dawn Bernhoft, corporate office manager at LPT, were not returned as of Thursday morning, Jan. 11.)
The nine Davenport stores approved for new liquor licenses include these closed Sinclair station sites:
- 3624 W. Locust St.
- 2805 Telegraph Road
- 3129 Rockingham Road
- 1732 N. Marquette St.
- 1136 W. Locust St.
- 2242 E. 12th St.
- 303 W. Locust St.
- 201 W. 53rd St.
- 1670 W. Kimberly Road
Mr. Gripp told the QCBJ that there are 14 closed Sinclair stations located throughout the Quad Cities area that he hopes will reopen in the coming weeks and months.
“I’ve received a lot of questions about the Kwik Shop gas stations that switched over to Sinclair and then abruptly closed their doors and fenced off their stores. The city has been in contact with the owners and they have told us that they do plan to reopen. A good sign that could be happening soon is that the company has applied for their liquor license to sell beer at those properties. I haven’t heard a timeline, but I’m encouraged to see some action,” Mr. Gripp wrote on his Facebook page.
As of Thursday morning, the nine Davenport Sinclair stations still appeared to be closed. For instance, the closed station at 3624 W. Locust St. – at the intersection of West Locust and North Fairmount streets and next to Uncle Bill’s Pizza – was still fenced off. There are four signs on the front windows of the station, each stating: “Closed. We will miss you all!”
The interior of the gas station building had its lights on, showing a series of empty shelves inside the building. However, there were also several large unopened boxes inside the store, located next to the front desk area.
The closed stations in Davenport and throughout the Quad Cities are part of a mass closure of Sinclair stations throughout the region.
In September, five former Kwik Shop convenience stores in the Cedar Rapids area that were purchased and rebranded as Sinclair stores, all closed.
Signs on the doors of the five stores – at 3301 J St. SW, 1003 First Ave. SW, 2904 Center Point Road NE and 4201 Center Point Road NE, all in Cedar Rapids, and at 300 Blairs Ferry Road NE in Hiawatha – indicated that the locations are permanently closed, and inventory has been removed from the stores.
The owner of those stores – Brew Oil, which is based in Storm Lake, Iowa – said it was forced to close Sinclair-branded convenience stores in Eastern Iowa, including Cedar Rapids, Hiawatha, Eldridge and Davenport, after attempts to renegotiate leases for the properties were unsuccessful.
That action was spurred by the Chapter 11 bankruptcy last March by a company called Mountain Express Oil, a Georgia-based convenience store landlord.
A lease that governed Brew’s operations of 15 convenience stores in Scott and Linn counties was terminated in late August by a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas, according to a statement Brew released in October.
The Eastern Iowa stores were then acquired by a new landlord, InCommercial, which is not affiliated with Brew or the bankrupt owner, Mountain Express Oil of Acworth, Georgia. Attempts to renegotiate the lease with InCommercial failed. Brew was then ordered to exit the properties, located in Cedar Rapids, Davenport and other cities in Eastern Iowa, according to the Storm Lake Times-Pilot.
“It was a very unfortunate sequence of events,” said Joe Kelly, a Brew Oil company spokesman, in a news release. “What happened was outside of Brew’s control. And despite good-faith efforts at operating the stores with a new owner, (Brew) couldn’t. The reputational damage is hard to overcome in a business that’s very interconnected and quite visible.”
In that Times-Pilot story, Inder Singh, owner of Brew Oil, said: “We couldn’t operate the stores profitably with the new lease terms proposed by the properties’ owners. We couldn’t make it work. I wasn’t expecting to be leasing the sites with the new owners.”
Chicago-based InCommercial is described on its website as a full-service real estate fund manager, property manager and asset management company. The company manages more than 270 properties across the nation.
