Shell Station Set for Summer Completion

After years of waiting, the Shell station at the corner of Diamond Bar Boulevard and Palomino Drive is expected to open mid-summer.

A string of permitting, planning, and contracting complications held up the project before the city reissued a permit on April 8 to the gas station, which will include a car wash, repair garage, and an expanded convenience store.

"I have a lot of good customers and they're mad at me," Matt Arassi, a part-owner of the station, said. "But the issue is money."

Arassi said that the "headache" of permits and contracting troubles brought down the project that he said could not be rushed.

"A gas station is nothing to cut corners on," Arassi said.

The city's Community Development Director Greg Gubman said the project was first halted when builders began diverting from plans the city had originally approved.

"The building official put in a stop work order and ordered them to build per the approved plans or submit revised plans," Gubman said.

On top of that, a dispute over payments led the contractor to leave the project.

"The property owners then had to deal with finding a new contractor and getting whatever past due payments between them," Gubman said.

By that time, six months had passed with no work on the site, which caused the permits originally issued to expire.

"So, they had to get new permits issued along with getting a new contractor," Gubman said.

Gubman said the city was able to approve a new permit without putting the project before the city's planning commission a second time.

"People were getting really upset with it because blight is not really something you ses in the city and it was starting to look blighted," Gubman said. "We've actually been working on getting them back in construction for a while, but unfortunately you don't see anything until there are actual hammers being swung."

Arassi said he hopes construction only takes another month, but Gubman said the project will likely be completed by the end of July.