RBC hopes to recoup its $2 million with gas station sale

The Ultramar gas station on Front St. is being marketed by receiver MNP

The station on Wednesday with yellow caution tape around the pumps.

This is a story about a business failure, a failed arson attempt, and the future of a slice of local history, all wrapped into one.

Chances are that if you drive in Campbellford you’ve noticed that the Ultramar gas station at 68 Front St. North, across from Sharpe’s Food Market, has been closed since August. Like me, you may also have noticed the yellow caution tape wrapped around the pumps and thought, well, not much other than ‘huh, that’s odd’.

First, the business failure. Sajjith Petro Inc. of Stouffville has operated the business in recent years, until it closed in August. That’s when the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) moved to get the almost $2 million that it was owed and sought to put the business in receivership.

On Oct. 25 Justice Stanley Kershman of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice appointed MNP Ltd. as receiver. No one from Sajjith Petro appeared in court to oppose the move. No other creditors are mentioned in the court documents, but John Haralovich, Senior Vice President, with MNP in Ottawa said that there are others who are owed money.

The property has been posted on Realtor.ca for more than 60 days priced at $2.4 million. The listing says the former Ultramar station is in great condition. “All the signage for Ultramar is still in place and subject to negotiations with Ultramar can be reactivated.”

But it also says: “This property is being sold in an AS IS, WHERE IS condition.”

That last line led me to think about the yellow caution tape and whether it is really something commercial real estate agents use when staging a property to make it attractive. Turns out the answer is no and the tape is connected to the failed arson attempt I mentioned at the top.

About the time RBC was moving to seize the property and get repayment for its loan, someone apparently tried to set the station on fire, but failed miserably.

John Sharpe says a security camera in his store’s parking lot captured video of an unidentified person setting a fire at about 3 a.m. The flames flared, but didn’t catch. The person fled and soon after the Trent Hills Fire Department came to extinguish the remnants and put up the yellow caution tape.

It’s not apparent from the current building and you may not realize it if you haven’t spent a lifetime in Campbellford, but there has been a gasoline station on this location for more than 60 years. In the early 1960s Tom Holmes operated it as a Supertest station, a proudly all-Canadian company based in London that closed in 1973.

Tom Holmes, right, and Larry Ellis outside the Supertest station. Photo courtesy of Chris Stapley on Facebook.

For many years the station was owned and operated by then mayor Hector Macmillan and his wife Sandy.

Haralovich of the receiver MNP said the site is being sold as a gasoline station. Asked if that was really a good business now days given the coming shift to electric vehicles, he responded: “I think we are decades away from saying gas stations are a thing of the past. Stations may become gas and quick-charge electric to allow for a mix of customers.”

He’s probably right, but others have suggested the site would be an ideal spot for a small apartment or condo building, since it is on the river with easy walking to everything in town.

I suspect one obstacle to ever turning the site into any other than a gas station would be the environmental cost. At the very least, a lot of testing would be needed to check for contaminants that might have been spilled during the decades as an automotive centre. And it could be costly to remove the buried fuel tanks and cart away any contaminated soil.