As plans to turn the parking lot behind Harvey Park's Brentwood Shopping Center into housing move forward, neighborhood resident and mid-modern preservationist Atom Stevens is lamenting that nobody fought for the historic preservation of the Country Gas shop.
Still, he maintains hope the building itself could be saved.
Country Gas is the 1960 roadside Googie-style convenience store with a wilting roof that resembles a circus tent at Jewell Avenue and Federal Boulevard.
Back in August, the developer 1951 S. Federal Blvd. LLC. submitted an application for demolition eligibility on that property.
Denver Landmark Preservation determined the building was eligible for saving, but nobody in the neighborhood or on City Council pushed to preserve the structure by the deadline.
Now, the city will allow the building to be torn down if the developer ultimately decides to do so.
Some neighbors have taken to social media to say scrapping the building is the right decision. Country Gas is tired and old, the building wasn't designed to be an eternal monument, and it's time for it to go.
"It's kind of disposable," said Stevens. "They were kind of built cheaply and meant to be affordable for those who were building and operating them."
But they're also a part of history -- the rise of car culture, and they have a unique design, he added. While Country Gas is covered in old wood, the original building was elegantly designed to be glass from top to bottom, and that wouldn't be hard to restore.
"The design is interesting because of this need to compete with the other roadside stores, diners, whatever," Stevens said. "You wind up with these interesting designs to attract people's eyes and pull them off the road. And they are works of art in that way, and I think they're worth preserving because of that."
A little history.
The building is part of the complex that makes up the Brentwood Shopping Center, serving Harvey Park's Burns-Brentwood subdivision, created by architect Franklin Burns in 1952. It was built as a Big Top store alongside a McDonald's in 1960.
Big Tops, once called AutoMarts, were designed to be mini-grocery stores that were easy to access for drivers stopping for gasoline. They had distinct pagoda-like tops associated with circus tents -- hence the new name.
"The Big Top chain was known for more than just architectural innovation, however; they marketed creatively, including a 1960 promotion-intended to highlight their 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. hours -- which gave a gift to the parents of every baby born in Denver Metro who weighed 7 lbs 11 oz at birth," the city wrote in its explanation for why the building is eligible for historic preservation.
The stores rented bicycles to customers and were among the first to offer self-serve gas.
Over the decades, the Big Top at the Brentwood Shopping Center went on to become a U-Tote-M gas station, then a Circle K and most recently Country Gas.
The store is the latest in a long string of mid-century modernist relics of car culture to be eligible for preservation.
Perhaps the most notorious was the old Tom's Diner building on Colfax Avenue that was designated historic and turned into Tom's Starlight, a fancier restaurant than its predecessor.
That new restaurant closed after just a year, Westword reported this week, and it's on the market to be rented.
While Stevens would like to see the Big Top building saved, he's happy something's finally happening with the parking lot behind the Brentwood Shopping Center.
"That parking lot is definitely a failure," he said. "I imagine it probably made sense back when the shopping center was built and there was a movie theater here and things like that that actually requires the additional parking that's behind the building. But for the the entire 19 years I've lived there, it's been essentially a vacant lot full of potholes, nothing, just a dead space in the city."
Concept plans submitted to the city by LAI Architects indicate the developers are considering building 98 homes in 22 buildings on that dead space.
As Denverite reported, the project will also include some open space and a detention pond, along with a pedestrian trail behind the development.
Neighbors have expressed concerns about the big changes coming to the neighborhood, voicing worries about a rise in traffic and a change in the neighborhood's character.
For Stevens, part of preserving the neighborhood is finding ways to adapt and reuse the Country Gas structure to keep history alive.
There are only 16 of these buildings constructed and only eight left, he said. He hopes that the one at the Brentwood Shopping Center is turned into something the neighborhood currently lacks: an independent coffee shop or another amenity.
He points to the stylish Snarf's at 5001 W. 38th Ave. in Berkeley as an example of a smart way to reuse one of these buildings.
"It would take money," Stevens admitted. "But it takes money to plow it down and build a brand new building."
