Customers Pay Last Respects to Station Running Out of Gas on Balboa Island

Hal Holleman pulled into his favorite service station for the last time Wednesday.

“How many gas stations can you pull into with your car, and they will clean your windshield, and you got a tail light broken, and they will put one in . . . and check your tires and check your oil while gassing you up?” Holleman asked.

He was quick with the answer: “You won’t find it,” he said.

Holleman was among many customers visiting the only gas station still serving affluent Balboa Island, to say goodby and to thank owner James Jennings and his employees for the service they have received over the years.

It was not uncommon, for example, for customers to leave their children under the watchful eyes of station employees while they went shopping.

“We’ve operated this (business) on a first-name basis,” Jennings said. “Everybody knows everybody, and everybody trusts everybody.”

A victim of low sales and soaring land values, the tiny, four-pump Unocal station at the corner of Marine and Park avenues will close as soon as it sells its remaining 1,500 gallons of gasoline.

That’s expected to happen sometime Friday.

Jennings, who has owned the station for 30 years, said he saw the writing on the wall after Unocal Corp. informed him 3 months ago that his monthly lease would not be renewed after it expired this month.

“We don’t feel it’s an economic station,” Unocal spokesman Arthur Bentley said. “The property is more valuable if we sell it than the income it generates.”

Customers and residents--at Jennings’ urging--delivered a petition with about 2,000 signatures and wrote letters to the oil company in an unsuccessful effort to save the business.

Jennings said he eventually came to understand Unocal’s position after he “got over the initial shock.” His station only pumps 25,000 gallons of gas a month, and it should be pumping more than 100,000, he said.

“At first I was upset about it,” he said. “But now that I know it’s inevitable, I’m looking forward to retirement.”

Unocal has been fair, he said. The company waived his last month’s rent and offered to sell him the 60-by-80-foot lot on which the station sits for $649,000. He said he didn’t have the money to buy it.

According to Rumbold Realty, an average Balboa Island home on a 30-by-85-foot lot sells for $445,000 and up. Bay-front homes go for $995,000 and up.

Starting today, the station will drop its gas price from $1.29 to 49 cents per gallon.

“We’ll lose $500 or $600, but that’s our way of leaving,” said mechanic Tom Castro, who along with two other station employees will open an auto repair shop in Newport Beach.

“They are more friends than customers.”