service plazas

ExxonMobil have negotiated a transfer of the convenience stores at their service plaza fuel stations on the Illinois Tollway system to 7-Eleven. Fuel pumps will continue to have the ExxonMobil brand but management of the stores will be transferred to 7-Eleven. The big fuel company decided it wanted 'out' of the masnagement of the convenience stores and last year negotiated a proposed sale to a little known Illinois fuel company. The Tollway refused to accept the transfer, but has welcomed the 7-Eleven chain.

7-Eleven will be rebranding the convenience stores with its name.

Guess it's the eternal journalistic quest for the bizarre or unexpected, but scores of newspapers, TV, radio and wire services who wouldn't spare a moment to tap a keyboard or jabber at a mike on a hundred million dollar interchange proposal are falling over one another to spin hundreds words about how New Jersey Turnpike staff and chairman James Simpson are "considering" and "exploring" the sale of naming rights to the Turnpike's service plazas.

Massachusetts Turnpike service plazas will not be privatized in a longterm concession. The state's transportation secretary (called Executive Office of Transportation) and the Turnpike CEO Jeff Mullan concurred in deciding this week to reject the bids made in a recent concession procurement.

None of the big interstate service plaza operators bid for the eleven on offer by the Massachusetts Turnpike. Two local groups made bids - Bulfinch Pike Investors, a special purpose company registered in Needham MA offered $180.2m, and Saracen Properties, a property manager in Waltham MA offered $140m.

Massachusetts Turnpike officials are seeking proposals for a longterm concession on their service plazas. At present they administer concessions on gasoline stations and food spaces on a one by one basis, but they are following the trend of other major turnpikes and to do a longterm master concession over the whole service plaza network. It would then be up to the master concessionaire to sublet spaces.

The Chicago press has run occasional reports over the past three years of federal prosecutors investigating corruption at the Illinois Tollway in connection with vendor contracts at their service plazas or 'oases' as they call them. This morning the thing went national with the Wall Street Journal in an editorial piece headed "The Chicago Boys":