Shea’s Route 66 Museum in Springfield, Illinois, which closed and its contents auctioned after the death of its longtime owner in 2013, will reopen this summer as a Route 66-themed auto-repair business.
Local classic-car aficionados Randy Pickett and Jake Niewold plan to convert the vacant building to an auto-repair and maintenance shop with a Route 66 theme, reported the Springfield State Journal-Register.
The goal is not a museum along the Shea’s line, said Pickett. But he said classic cars and Route 66 memorabilia would be blended into the still-unnamed shop at 2075 Peoria Road with the long-term goal of once again making the site a stop for Route 66 tourists.
“Route 66 is something we both enjoy. I went through it myself several times when it was a museum,” said Pickett, a retiree of the Illinois Department of Transportation. […]
Pickett and Niewold said they are on the lookout for a set of vintage gas pumps to aid the Route 66 look, though the business will not sell gasoline. […]
Auto repairs and service are the first goal, according to the partners, but they also hope to restore at least some of the tourism drawing power of the old Shea’s Route 66 Museum.
“It’s going to look like a (Route 66) period station,” said Pickett. “It’s going to be a work in progress.”
Bill Shea, the longtime curator of Shea’s Gas Station Museum, died at age 91 in December 2013. He had converted a Marathon station on Route 66 into a museum filled with gas-station memorabilia that included a 1920s station he moved from Middletown, Illinois. Shea greeted thousands of Route 66 travelers from dozens of countries over the years.
Much of Shea’s memorabilia was auctioned in November 2015 after the heirs tried unsuccessfully to sell the property and its contents. Fulgenzi’s Pizza and Pasta bought the Middletown station and moved it down the road there last year.
The north end of Springfield reportedly saw a drop in Route 66 in tourism in 2015. City officials cited the closing of Shea’s museum as a reason.
(Image of Shea’s Gas Station Museum in 2007 by Sandor Weisz via Flickr)
That’s great news. I drove by the property at Easter and saw that it was marked “Sold”. I’m glad to see the building saved, and by someone with an eye towards it’s Route 66 location and heritage.
On the name I would encourage the new owners with the Shea’s family permission to somehow keep the “Shea’s” name in it. It would automatically provide more marketing, if they want it. It would continue the memory of Bill and Helen more, also. Glad to hear there are new owners and wish them well however they do it.