Auto Centers Attracting Investors

It’s becoming more commonplace to see multiple independently owned automotive businesses--a tire retailer, a muffler shop, a smog check operation--operating under the same roof or in the same complex.

Joe Lopez, president of Westcord Commercial Group, a network of commercial real estate companies with an office in Westlake Village, was involved in the sale last month of the Westland Auto Care Center, a 30,000-square-foot property at the well-traveled intersection of Telephone Road and Transport Avenue in Ventura.

The four buildings on the property are anchored by Just Tires, Econo-Lube N’ Tune, Taylor Rentals and Meineke Muffler. Lopez represented the Hartman Family Trust in its sale of the property to a Van Nuys investor. The sale price was not disclosed.

Lopez said properties such as the Westland center are in great demand as the economy rebounds. “There are not many good automotive properties that have the right mix of businesses, curb appeal and have the right type of big names,” he said.

“Automotive centers didn’t really catch on until the late ‘80s,” he said. “But by that time the recession hit and there was no financing.”

Another part of the problem in the past, said Lopez, was a reluctance on the part of developers to see automotive centers as retail operations.

Now, said Lopez, giant automotive companies such as Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. are ready to settle into automotive centers located in busy areas with good parking and an otherwise viable retail setting. And investors, he said, are seeing automotive centers as hot properties.