I'm most surprised by the position of the gas meter. If this is a standard door, I'd guess the meter to be some 6' above ground, and no gas company I know of would allow that! The meter reader needs a ladder in that case...
It looks like there a distribution manifold of two rows of gas meters installed for this building to the left of the service entrance.
There is a locked off meter shutoff valve to the left of the one we see and just in the top left of the picture you can see the bottom corner of another gas meter.
Yup... that's more gas meters! What gas company on earth allows (or even put) meters in front of a window??? With meters you should think the utility was involved in some way!
What you don't see is the sloped roadway. The first gas meter is only 55 inches obove the surface. The main electrical disconnect and sub-disconnects are mounted in the verical concrete vault.