Norco Auto Mall Lures Dealership From Corona

Ford Motor Co. has signed a contract to build a dealership in the Norco Auto Mall, making it the first automobile company to commit to one of the competing auto centers planned by this city and neighboring Corona.

Hemborg Ford, now located in central Corona, will move north to Norco within a year, Norco City Manager John Donlevy said Tuesday, confirming the signing.

The competition to attract--and, in Corona’s case, to retain--automobile dealers is a high-stakes game for the two cities, because a single dealership can provide tens of thousands of dollars in sales-tax revenue to city coffers.

Corona officials reacted to the loss of the Ford dealership with “disappointment, of course, because we don’t want to lose any of our dealerships . . . disappointment that Mr. Hemborg is committing to something we feel is not going to be all that successful,” Corona City Manager James Wheaton said.

“That’s a feeling we’re getting from other automobile people that are looking at their site and our site.” Wheaton declined to identify the dealers with whom Corona has been discussing its auto center plans.

“We are talking with a good many people who are expressing interest in our project,” the Corona city manager said. “As far as our auto center is concerned, the loss of the Ford agency will not have a major impact.”

But Corona’s plans for an auto center have lagged behind those of its northern neighbor.

While Corona was waiting for a study of one site and considering two others, Norco already had selected its 88-acre site, had imposed a moratorium on development and had begun aggressively courting dealers.

It enacted a master plan for its mall in December, and Norco officials say the city is negotiating site purchases with at least two more dealers.

Corona, meanwhile, has yet to reach an agreement with the owner of the majority of its proposed auto center site, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. But Wheaton said that “negotiations are going along very well.”

Norco officials hope to lure as many as 13 dealers to their auto mall, using redevelopment funds to subsidize land purchases and provide improvements. For the Ford dealership, those incentives are worth about $1 million, Donlevy said.

MP, GUS KELLER / Los Angeles Times