By Collin Gallant on May 16, 2018.
Medicine Hat News GasKing is moving ahead with a second location in Medicine Hat — the seventh in total for the Lethbridge-based fuel and convenience store company in Southern Alberta. Company officials confirmed on Tuesday that the high-traffic Kingsway Avenue location they have owned and operated for a year will be under major renovations as of Tuesday, May 22. It will reopen in the late summer under the GasKing logo with new carwash facilities and new convenience store on the busy north-south route. “We’ve owned it for a little over a year with the intent of running it as an independent label,” said Brent Morris, president of the family-owned chain, of the station recently known as Kingsway Fuel and Carwash. “We’ve needed that time to come up with the plans. They’re done, the contractor has been hired and we shut it down on May 8.” At that time construction fence went up with signs proclaiming the switchover. When it reopens in late August it will feature a company branded convenience store, and updates throughout the property. The upstairs of the location will serve as local offices for the company, which will continue operation of its station on Third Street in Riverside. The Kingsway location offers a higher profile on a busy route. “It will be a bit of a flagship for us in Medicine Hat,” said Morris. “It’ll be completely redone, new everything in the store. The wash bays will be updated in the self-serve washes, and the automatic car wash will be new — it was so old that we couldn’t get parts anymore.” The station, at the corner of Sixth Street in the South Flats, was recently a Husky and before that an Esso. Gas King is based in Lethbridge, where it operates four locations, as well as one in Picture Butte. 14