Built in 1931 and vacant since 1997, this gas station at Cherry Hill and Military could be razed for a single-story office building.

A development plan to transform a long-vacant service station at the corner of Military and Cherry into a single story medical office building will soon make its way before Dearborn City Council.

Property owner Adel O. Seifeddine, along with his architect, Joseph A. Guido, will be asking Council members to approve a resolution by the Dearborn Plan Commission to rezone the property from residential to a business office area. The Plan Commission earlier this month unanimously voted to approve the request by Guido and Seifeddine to rezone the property at 131 S. Military (lots 23-27), in what is known in the City’s books as Long’s River Rouge Park subdivision.

While the rezoning doesn’t mean construction is imminent, it is a step in the right direction to perhaps have this long-vacant corner cleaned up with a building that could tastefully fit into the existing neighborhood.

The property, the longtime home to a gas station and service garage, has been vacant since October 1997.

The original zoning for the building – a local business district – was established in 1931, which paved the way for a gas station to be built at the corner in the same year.

In 1951, the city rezoned the property to Residential A (One family residential district) but the station was allowed to remain (grandfathered usage) because it was operating long before the rezoning of the property took place.

The gas station closed in October 1997 and was left vacant. Since that time several requests have come before the City of Dearborn to have the property rezoned to allow either a medical building or a neighborhood coffee shop. Area residents, however, wanted a residential home to be built at that corner and convinced city leaders to turn those business requests down. But finding someone to purchase the property for several hundred thousand dollars, then pay to have the building razed, the site cleaned and then finally building a home on the property was simply beyond the reach of most homebuyers so the station sat vacant.

The earlier rejected requests are interesting because the existing land use at the intersection of Cherry Hill and Military consist of three of non-residential uses that all abut residential homes. There is a church on the northeast corner, a medical parking lot at the southwest corner and a medical building (DDS) at the northwest corner. The vacant gas station sits at the southeast corner.

With this new proposal now headed to City Council, a larger group of area residents, some who concede to being “tired” looking at the vacant gas station, now support the current development plan for the site.