Brighton liquor store to become a car dealership

The real money in dealerships today is the service, not sales area. That is why you have really nice workstations, fireplaces, free coffee, free wifi, and nice chairs in your newer dealership buildings. You are made to feel comfortable while the car is being serviced, despite the tv being tuned to Divorce Court, Faux News, or Maury. The service areas are typically bigger now than the showrooms.

Prices for dealerships and land for dealerships are very high right now, owing to the massive amount of cars being sold, which is approaching 2006-2007 levels.

I strongly doubt that the old building will be reused for car sales. A dealership's appearance is marketing. There are exceptions for sure, especially in the inner core market. Lexus of Watertown repurposed an old factory for inventory and Herb Chambers was going to reuse Channel 56 as is but those plans have changed. There is also a proposal at the BRA which has been posted here on UHub to reuse Waldo Bros on Southampton Street using much of the existing building, but completely redone for high end used sales.

The gross building area that is on the site now in Brighton, roughly 14,500 SF, that is about the size of a early 2000's built suburban Nissan dealership and Fiat dealerships that have been built tend to be smaller than say an new Honda or Toyota dealership. They just flat out sell more cars at Honda & Toyota. Fiat has recently had one dealer just give up their franchise in NH. They just didn't want it. The existing GBA will help with any redevelopment plans and lower the amount of horse trading that might have to go on with the BRA.

Dealers biggest problem right now is inventory and labor. The more cars you can fit on a site, the more selection you can offer for sale. Land is scarce. If anyone has noticed the Freeport Tavern closed in Dorchester and the site was immediately leased (I think, there hasn't been a recorded sale) to nearby Expressway Toyota for storage. The closer you have your inventory to your dealership, the less you have to pay drivers to move the cars around and the less you have to worry about them crashing into other cars on the street and less you have to worry about their priors/background. That is not a universal statement on inventory drivers but I have had one now well retired dealer once tell me that it was one of the things that kept him up at night.

Good luck to Fiat here. It is interesting that they bought the site and not some local dealership group. I assume they might try to utilize any signage to take advantage of their location next to the Pike for their benefit.

Van Ness Avenue has some great, great buildings still used for auto sales. It is much like what Kenmore Square used to look like, but still in use.

http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/pages/1054/files/van%20ness%20auto%20row.pdf