The former Sunnyside Service Station north of Milford was demolished March 6 after sitting empty for decades.
The station was located at 2653 O Street Road, east of Highway 6. It was operational during the 1950s, 60s and 70s before becoming Big Red Supply for a brief time in the 1980s.
The property now belongs to a trust, with the trustee residing in Colorado having no connection to the Milford area.
Seward County Commissioner Misty Ahmic said she spent the past year working to get the property cleaned up after hearing complaints from area residents that it had become a safety hazard and an eyesore.
Ahmic said rodents living in the dilapidated building often ended up as roadkill, which easily could have caused a car accident.
Ahmic located the trustee and connected them with Colton Wehrs and Ryan Krenk, two local business owners who offered to take down the building and haul away the debris.
Wehrs spent the morning of March 6 demolishing the building and loading the debris into a truck for Krenk to remove. He filled in the basement underneath the structure and removed a few trees to clean up the space.
A gas tank remains under the property.
Among the debris was a bathtub with a bit of a storied history.
On Nov. 14, 1988, authorities found a burglar hiding in the tub after fleeing from a theft at the Lincoln zoo.
Andy Schimtz, age 20 at the time, along with Craig Shephard, 21, and Shane Hutchison, 23, allegedly stole “a crowbar and hacksaw from the zoo shop and used the tools to obtain a television, video cassette recorder, dictaphones, radios, keys and cameras from other areas of the building,” according to the Nov. 23, 1988, edition of the Seward County Independent. Schimtz had been an employee of the zoo at one time.
After stealing vehicles from Lincoln, the men fled to the Milford area. Schimtz was discovered in the bathtub after he let in a transient – unconnected to the crimes – to take shelter in the old gas station building during the day’s bad weather.
