Tim Landis Column

Green announces site for Lincoln-Mercury Mazda

GREEN LINCOLN-MERCURY MAZDA should have a permanent home by the end of the year.

Work has begun on two facilities - one for Lincoln-Mercury and the other for Mazda - on a five-acre site at Sixth Street and Hazel Dell Road. The combined dealerships will be approximately 26,000 square feet.

“We should be open in early December,” said owner Todd Green, who also has Green Toyota and Volkswagen-Audi dealerships on Wabash Avenue and a Hyundai dealership on South Dirksen Parkway.

The move to South Sixth Street is something of a round trip for the Lincoln-Mercury and Mazda brands in Springfield.

HPR Automotive Group, which has since left the auto business in Springfield, acquired the old Railsplitter Lincoln-Mercury dealership on South Dirksen Parkway in 1997 and moved it to Wabash Avenue.

HPR later moved its Mazda dealership, also on Dirksen Parkway, to the same west-side location.

A Mississippi auto group bought the dealerships from HPR in early 2000 but stayed a little less than two years. Green acquired the lines from the parent companies last fall and temporarily combined operations at the other Wabash Avenue sites.

“We moved it here with the understanding I’d be building them a new store,” said Green, who said the Sixth Street site was his first and only choice for a new dealership.

“You have 27,000 cars a day going through there, and it’s also a main artery into the city,” said Green. Access will be from Hazel Dell Road.

He estimated 25 employees would be added to his existing work force of approximately 100 when the new stores open. The facility will take about four of five acres at the site, leaving room for expansion.

And it also happens that both the Wabash Avenue location and the site on Sixth Street are adjacent to proposed sites for Wal-Mart superstores.

Wal-Mart has filed initial zoning plans for the Wabash location, immediately west of Green Toyota.

No specific plans have been filed for the Sixth Street site. An existing Wal-Mart superstore on North Dirksen opened in 2001.

While proximity to a Wal-Mart might seem like a good way to build traffic, Green said he is neutral on the projects.

“If they don’t end up going there (at either site), it won’t bother me a bit,” he said.

Speaking of Wal-Mart. The COBBLESTONE ESTATES HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION approved two resolutions last week in opposition to the proposed supercenter on Wabash Avenue, which would be immediately south of the subdivision.

The first resolution asks the city council to reject any variances or zoning requests that would allow “large, retail development” adjacent to residential areas and to revise zoning ordinances to protect against such developments in the future.

The second resolution asks that Wal-Mart be required to pay for an independent study of water runoff from the site and to share the results with the homeowners before any further development of the property.

Tim Landis is business editor of The State Journal-Register.