Norco Gaining in Auto Mall Derby : Will Allow Dealership to Operate in Temporary Facilities
Eager to get a jump on the competition, a Connecticut company will move into trailers and other temporary facilities so it can open this city’s first new-car dealership early next year.
The Norco City Council agreed late Wednesday to a request by Caldrello Motor Group of Waterford, Conn., to allow sales and service of Mitsubishi automobiles at a temporary site in the Norco Auto Mall.
“It’s a good market out here, a competitive market,” said Joseph Caldrello II, vice president of Caldrello Motor Group. “The sooner we get in, the better off we’ll be.”
Acting in its role as the Norco Community Redevelopment Agency, the City Council also agreed to purchase land for Phillips Pontiac and Mazda, a dealership that the city fought hard to wrest from its location down the street in Corona.
Phillips will move the mile and a half to the Norco Auto Mall in about a year and a half, said Steve Soto, the city’s new economic development coordinator. The Pontiac-Mazda dealer will take a site next to Hemborg Ford, another dealer that Norco has wooed away from its southern neighbor.
Norco will spend $604,000 on the land, which it will resell to Phillips for $560,000, Soto said. The difference will be repaid over five years from sales tax revenue that Norco will receive from Phillips’ business.
Sales tax is the prime motive behind the aggressive efforts of Norco and other Inland Empire cities to attract auto dealers. A single dealer can bring a city up to $250,000 a year in sales tax, and city officials estimate that the Norco Auto Mall could eventually contribute $1.5 million to $2 million annually to the city treasury.
That flow of new tax dollars could begin as early as next month because Caldrello hopes to open the Mitsubishi agency by the end of January. “It’s a winning situation for the city, it’s a winning situation for the manufacturer, and it’s a winning situation for us,” he said.
The dealership will create between 35 and 50 jobs in Norco, Caldrello associate Harper B. Clifford pointed out.
Caldrello Motor Group pressed the city to grant a “conditional use permit” that would allow it to operate the dealership from temporary buildings, Soto said. “That, in turn, is to our benefit. Once they start selling cars, we start getting sales tax. So we’re more than glad to oblige them.
“The whole thing worked out in everybody’s best interest.”
Mitsubishi did not apply pressure for the quick opening, Caldrello said, but the manufacturer is “definitely anxious” to start selling in Norco. “They want to get into the market before someone else gets there,” he added.
Caldrello’s temporary site is vacant, save for a house that was occupied by a now-bankrupt insurance agency, Soto said.
The city hopes to assemble and deliver a permanent site for the Mitsubishi dealership to Caldrello before the end of 1987, Soto said. He declined to specify the planned location within the auto mall or its likely cost, citing pending negotiations with landowners.
In neighboring Corona, plans to develop its own auto center are stalled by a lawsuit challenging the city’s redevelopment procedures and environmental impact review for a 27-acre site on the west side of town.
But that city may have scored its first victory in the fight to keep its dealers--now spread along 6th Street, Main Street and the Riverside Freeway--from fleeing to the Norco mall.
The city offered to help Corona Nissan, the highest-volume, new-car dealer in the area, to buy its present site now, if it will agree to move later into the Corona Auto Center, off the Riverside Freeway at Serfas Club Drive.
Norco had previously been courting Corona Nissan owner Glenna Maguire with an offer of subsidized land in the auto mall.
Maguire is not expected to respond to the proposal until a Dec. 29 public hearing on the deal. But Norco, with less financial clout at its disposal, is “not going to be here in a bidding war with Corona,” Soto conceded.
“We’re not actively pursuing her at this time,” he said.
