Gas station closes at Oakway, with auto shop moving nearby.

Byline: RETAIL NOTEBOOK By Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

It wasn't that Orie Baird really wanted to go, but the writing was on the wall.

It began during the reconstruction of Coburg Road several years ago, when lengthy lane closures hurt several businesses north of the Ferry Street bridge. It didn't help when the Eugene City Council imposed a nickel-per-gallon gasoline tax two years ago.

Then there was the huge success of a renovated Oakway Center, where his Union 76 station was taking up increasingly valuable space at the south end of the mall property.

"To be honest with you, within a few years we would have had to negotiate another lease (with the Oakway owners)," Baird says. "We just made the decision we'd be better off out of it."

Baird, who got into the local gasoline station business by buying the Oakway Service Center in 1993, closed his flagship station on July 31.

McKay Investment Co. of Eugene, the Oakway Center's owner, released Baird from his lease and ConocoPhillips, the parent company of Union 76, agreed to the closure.

The gas station's pumps were removed Wednesday, and underground tanks are expected to be removed sometime later this year.

Baird still owns Union 76 stations in Glenwood, Pleasant Hill and on River Road - locations where he says business has been unhurt by the city's gas tax. But he says it was an emotional experience to shutter his first station.

"I hated it," he says. "I stood over there the other day, closing it down, and there were tears in my eyes. But life goes on, and you've got to make the best out of it."

To that end, Baird has moved the automotive repair side of his Oakway business across Coburg Road to 2508 Oakmont Way, behind the Albertsons supermarket. The new Oakway Service Center has four repair bays rather than the three that were available in the service station building, along with a larger waiting room for customers.

As for future gas station ventures, Baird is leaving the door open.

"I don't have any plans, but plans sometimes fall in your lap," he says. "I'm a workaholic. I can't do enough."

Plans already are being made for the former gas station property, said Steve Korth, director of real estate and development for family-owned McKay Investment Co.

Korth says he expects to redevelop the property with a new building at the V-shaped corner of Coburg and Oakway roads. The size of the building and tenant mix have not been settled upon, but "some combination of retail and a restaurant" is most likely, he says.

"We certainly have some ideas and have made some initial contacts (with potential tenants), but nothing is set in stone by any means," Korth says.

The underground fuel tanks will be removed and the gas station building will be demolished this winter. Korth says he hopes for construction of a new building to begin sometime next year.

The project will follow the Oakway Center's current task of moving the T.J. Maxx store out of the shopping center and across Coburg Road to its own building. McKay Investment already has demolished the former Ramada Inn at 225 Coburg Road, and is preparing the site for the new building.

The building that T.J. Maxx leaves behind in the Oakway Center will then be redeveloped, with a reconfigured interior and an all-new exterior with "village-style" architecture to match the rest of the center.

"We're hopeful to put in probably three to four retailers in that 22,000 square feet," Korth says.

CAPTION(S):

The service station site at Oakway Center's south end will become `some combination of retail and a restaurant,' a spokesman says.