WESTBROOK – On Tuesday, a sign up in the window of LeClerc’s Service Center in Westbrook advertised that the recently closed gas station is available for purchase or lease.

But even as the locks on the doors at 952 Main St. were being changed, Jeff Farstad was still turning away drivers looking for gas and callers asking to bring vehicles in for repairs.

“It’s tough talking to my customers,” Farstad, 43, said Tuesday as he finished closing the station for the last time.

Farstad worked as a mechanic at the station for the past 18 years, but learned over the holiday weekend that the station’s owner, Tim Flannery, was closing the business.

“(Flannery) said he couldn’t do it anymore,” Farstad said.

The station has been a fixture on Main Street for as long as most can remember. Its longtime owner, Roger LeClerc, started working there at age 15, in 1957. LeClerc, whose name is still on the station’s sign today, was a Westbrook High School student at the time, working for then-station owner Vincent Connors.

LeClerc started out doing oil changes and pumping gas, but he took over the station 10 years later, and ran it until he retired in 2009. Flannery bought the business from him in October of that year.

“We’re trying to keep doing what Roger has done for the past 40 years,” Flannery said at the time. “Good, quality service.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Farstad said he had been trying all morning to put up a sign outside saying the station was closed, but he kept getting interrupted by customers trying to come in.

“It’s taken me an hour to put this up,” he said, gesturing to the letters for the sign he has been trying to display.

It’s no wonder people keep driving in. Not only is the station popular with the locals, but also the regulars know Farstad so well, they know when they see his black Dodge Ram 1500 pickup parked outside, it means the station is open.

“They see me here, and they automatically pull in,” he said.

But Tuesday was not an ordinary day, for Farstad or for Joe Arsenault, the station’s other mechanic, who has worked there for nearly four years.

“We stopped buying gas last week,” Arsenault said, which to him was a sign that something was up.

Arsenault said he found out via “word of mouth” over the weekend, and confirmed with Flannery the station was closing Tuesday morning. Arsenault said he turned in his keys and his uniform and collected his tools.

Flannery is perhaps best known for owning the Dana Warp Mill, and bringing in new business to that building, before defaulting on his mortgage on the property in 2010. The building has since been taken over by Alexsandar (Sasa) Cook.

Flannery did not return calls seeking comment on the station’s closing. Beth Bernard, who represents Art Girard, the property’s owner, said Flannery told her last Friday that he was closing the shop, citing the difficult economy as part of the reason.

“Garages are suffering right now,” she said. “Tim is as sad as Jeff is. This was a hard decision.”

Farstad will be working at Bernie’s Car Care on Riverside Street. That garage is also owned by Girard, Bernard said.

The station has two other part-time employees, who are now looking for other part-time work. Arsenault, when asked where he would go, said, “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”

Mechanic Jeff Farstad, 43, stands outside LeClerc’s Service
Center, where he has worked for the past 18 years. The well-known
Main Street business closed Tuesday. (Staff photo by Sean
Murphy)