The gas station at 571 Washington Avenue, long known as Pezzi Service Center, has been pumping gas under new owners since late spring without the occupancy permit it needs to operate. On September 10 the Chelsea Licensing Commission declined to act on the new operator’s application for a petroleum storage license and continued it to October 8. Commissioners told the company’s representative that if the occupancy permit is not on file with the licensing department by then, they will shut the station down.
The application was the only public hearing on the agenda. It asks for a petroleum storage license in the name of the company that bought the station. Its representative, who described himself as a regional supervisor and project manager for the company, said it had “taken over the existing” station and was applying for the license and an occupancy permit “under the proper operating entity.” The company runs 21 other locations, he said.
How the city found out
Michael McAteer, Chelsea’s director of inspectional services, told the board the department learned the station was operating under new ownership only when someone applied for a sign permit. McAteer went to the site in early August. “I don’t know the exact date,” McAteer said, placing it around August 9. According to McAteer, the representative “said he had no clue he needed a license or an occupancy permit.”
The sale went through in late May or early June, according to the application and the representative’s answers. No one had inspected the station in years, because nothing required it. “It hasn’t changed hands for 50 years,” McAteer said. When inspectors went in, they “found some violations that need to be fixed.”
What is still missing
As of the hearing, the fire department, the electrical inspector and the Department of Public Works still had to sign off before an occupancy permit could be issued. Electrical work had already been done without a permit. “He’s got an invoice that electrician did work. He should have got a permit. He didn’t,” McAteer said. McAteer also said a sign had been changed without a sign permit. The representative said the company had not touched the large sign; McAteer said a smaller one had gone up, and that “any sign you put up” needs a permit.
McAteer read from a September 2 email in which the company asked what else it had to submit, and said that until then, “it looks like up until September 2nd, he wasn’t doing anything.” The representative blamed “a bit of a communication issue” in his own office and trouble with the city’s online permit portal. He said the company had been told the only item missing was a test report on the station’s oil and water separator, which he had brought to the meeting.
Why the station is still open
Commissioners asked more than once how the station could be operating at all. McAteer said the city chose not to close it while the owners worked through the permits: “the city administratively didn’t want to shut him down.” One commissioner answered that the fire department or inspectional services “should be shutting them down if they don’t have an occupancy permit.” Another said, “I’m pretty positive that in other cases we do not allow people to operate when they don’t have an occupancy permit.”
A third commissioner said the application should never have reached the board in this state. “We’re just not supposed to see an application until all of this is done.” The packet sent to commissioners on September 1 showed only that the company had applied and carried liability insurance; the open items sat with inspectional services and were not in front of the board.
The commission settled on a working view for now: because the new owners had changed nothing, the station was still operating under the prior owner’s license, and the new owners are responsible for it until they get their own. The commissioner who laid that out said, “I’m not a lawyer,” and noted that the board’s counsel was not at the meeting.
The vote
The board voted by voice to continue the hearing to its October 8 meeting. Before the representative left, he was told the occupancy permit has to be turned in to the licensing department before that date, and that if it is not, “we will be forced to shut down the business.” He promised to start “tomorrow.” “I’ll call every number I have to call,” he said.
Also on the agenda
Licensing staff reported that the mailed notice for this year’s mandatory alcohol training for every liquor license holder in the city went out with last year’s date on the English side and this year’s date on the Spanish side, and that a corrected notice was sent. The session was scheduled for Tuesday, September 22, 10 a.m. to noon, at the Homewood Suites on Beach Street, with the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission and the police and fire departments. Owners or managers of record were required to attend or send someone. Approval of the prior meeting’s minutes was held over, and the police department had nothing to report. The commission next meets Thursday, October 8.