Morning Journal/Larry Shields The former Clark gas station at 824 W. State St. will have the gas tanks and contaminated materials removed before the convenience store building is razed.

SALEM — A remediation crew started remedial work on the former Clark gas station at 824 W. State St. on Tuesday.

The property is owned by the Columbiana County Land Utilization Corp., better known as the land bank.

Bobby Ritchie, executive director for the land bank, said they became involved because of liability issues regarding the property as a brownfield project, in which a structure needs to be demolished or renovated.

Brownfield projects are used in industry and are meant to start a project based on prior work or to rebuild a product from an existing one.

By acquiring the property last August the land bank could also oversee the project.

Ritchie said the city of Salem played an important role in phase I in which Premcor Refining Group is paying for the work to remediate the 8,750 square foot site (.2 acres) that currently has an unimproved land market value of $21,900.

At this point Ritchie said, “We’re looking at the next step of phase I of the remediation and taking care of contaminated matter and the gas tanks.”

“We’re working with two different environmental geologists,” he said, adding he was unsure if there were two or four tanks underground.

Once the gas tanks and contaminated matter are removed phase II will begin and include demolition of the old building and cleaning up the area.

The county, with the city’s assistance is receiving a “gas station cleanup grant” for the demolition work of the store and canopy over the pumps.

“We have two different companies coming in for that,” Ritchie said, explaining that when their work is concluded, “then we’ll decide, after everything is up to government standards, what to do with it.”

lshields@salemnews.net