Goodbye, Abbott: Last Dealer on Old Auto Row in Salinas Plans Move
By Dania Akkad, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
Feb. 28–The last remaining Salinas auto dealership on Abbott Street is moving to the Salinas Auto Mall neighborhood.
Chevrolet of Salinas, in the heart of the city’s former Auto Row at 366 Abbott St., was purchased from Medford, Ore.-based Lithia Motors several months ago by Tom Maher, owner of the MY Auto Group of Seaside and Salinas.
This week, Maher will officially take over the Abbott Street dealership, renaming the business MY Chevrolet. By the end of the year, he said he intends to move it to Boronda Crossing, the shopping center which developer Tony Sammut plans to build adjacent to the Salinas Auto Mall.
“No question about it,” Maher said of the move. “That’s where you need to be.”
Maher declined to say how much he had paid for the dealership. A call to Lithia Motors headquarters was not returned by press time.
Opened in 1923 as Richardson Chevrolet by George H. Richardson, the dealership is perhaps best known more recently for its commercial jingle which promised customers that they would “come away a lot richer at Richardson Chevrolet.”
“We’re going to try to bring that back,” Maher said. “It’s corny, but everyone remembers it.”
Lithia Motors, which has 94 locations in 12 states, bought family-owned Richardson Chevrolet in 2003, renaming it Chevrolet of Salinas and leasing the eight-acre Abbott Street property from the Richardson family.
But sales haven’t “lived up to the expectations that they had,” said Bill Quinlan, grandson of founder George Richardson. Quinlan has worked at the dealership since 1967.
“I’m very, very excited about Tom purchasing the franchise,” Quinlan said Monday.
Quinlan, his mother and his uncle, who own the property where the dealership now sits, have yet to make plans about what to do with the land. Many of the former dealership properties on the street have been replaced by medical-service related businesses and suites.
The roughly 50 employees at the dealership, including Quinlan, will be offered jobs as it changes hands, Maher said.
MY Chevrolet’s move from Abbott Street to the Salinas Auto Mall follows a six-year migration of all the Abbott Street new-car dealers to the center along Highway 101, near Harden Ranch and Northridge Mall.
“We were landlocked. We had old facilities, and auto rows are no longer the concept,” said Ron Frieberg, owner of Salinas Valley Ford Isuzu and one of the developers of the auto mall. “So we had to do something.”
The first dealership moved to the auto mall in 1999, Frieberg said. The center now offers more than 17 brands of cars.
“Of course,” Frieberg said, “we are happy to have Chevrolet come out here.”
Dania Akkad can be reached at 753-6752 or dakkad@montereyherald.com.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Monterey County Herald, Calif.
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