FOR BROAD STREET
10 years after taking over a west Bethlehem garage, owner Nelson Tavarez now has big plans ...
Ten years ago this month, Nelson Tavarez became owner of a west Bethlehem auto repair shop. Tavarez kept the business’ name — Austin’s Auto Service — and eventually grew it from five to 19 employees, and from several service bays to 13. He also expanded a towing business, and leased a parking lot nearby to handle hauling vehicles for the city and private auto agencies.
Between the lot and his auto shop in the 1800 block of West Broad Street was a much larger building Tavarez really coveted — a World War II-era structure where soda used to be bottled and shipped. A front entrance sign in cement still shows the script lettering: Coca-Cola.
“I told them, ‘Let me know if you are ever going to sell,’ because I saw somebody looking through the windows and I got nervous,” Tavarez said. “That’s when they said, ‘We want to sell.’ ”
How Tavarez, who grew up in Passaic, New Jersey, and the Dominican Republic, got here is testament to a minority owned entrepreneur’s ingenuity, and Godshall’s trust in an employee who displayed business smarts and strong work ethic.
Tavarez and his wife, Carolina, bought the former CocaCola plant, known as the Banko Building, from Frank Banko III for $750,000 in March, Lehigh County property records show.
The Tavarezes, who live in Upper Macungie Township, renamed the building West Broad Street Commons. Their goal — once renovations are completed, particularly on the first floor — is to turn the former industrial site into a business complex with offices, light industrial use and more.
“I just keep pinching myself,” Tavarez said of his business fortune.
During a recent tour of the cement-and-brick structure, Tavarez, his wife and project manager Howard Lieberman talked about the future, and about when good fortune did not always smile down on the soft-spoken Tavarez.
Before joining the garage, Tavarez, 44, installed phone equipment for a subcontractor with Verizon and long-distance telephone companies. He was making a good living, until the dot-com bubble burst in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“As fast as I was installing equipment, they were paying me to remove equipment,” said Tavarez, who also recalled being furloughed more than a dozen times and being sent to jobs around the country and beyond. His wife, 39, who works with Tavarez, lived in Bogota, Colombia, but came to New Jersey with family to escape decades of war between guerilla fighters and the government.
Tavarez decided to shift gears from telecom to automotive repair. He had learned the basics from his father-in-law, and enrolled in on-the-job training through Pennsylvania CareerLink Lehigh Valley.
The training part came from Austin Godshall, who had owned the repair shop since 1977.
It was 2003 when Tavarez approached Godshall for a job.
“He said, ‘I want you to know something’ “Godshall said. “‘You only have to tell me and show me something once. I will master it, hold on to it and train other technicians with it.’ “
Within three months, Godshall said, Tavarez went from entrylevel mechanic to business manager.
“He’s blown my mind from the day he walked into my business,” said Godshall, of Allen Township.
As for the Coca-Cola building, Tavarez saw the chance to turn a bottling plant into a business complex partly as a matter of being able to keep his towing business, and partly to improve the west Bethlehem neighborhood.
“They’re good community members; they’re good employers,” said Lieberman, managing partner of Business & Community Financing Solutions LLC of Whitehall Township, who was working for the Bethlehem Community and Economic Development office when the Tavarezes closed 10 years ago on Austin’s Auto Service.
“Howard was the only one who had everything put together,” Nelson Tavarez recalled of that first meeting, leading him to make a mental note to keep in touch with Lieberman.
Redevelopment
The area along West Broad Street, a gateway to Bethlehem from east Allentown, is a mixture of homes interspersed with small businesses, including at least three auto repair shops.
The local Coca-Cola Bottling franchise was founded in 1917 on 10th Avenue in Bethlehem. By the early 1940s, the company moved to West Broad Street and was renamed Quaker State CocaCola Bottling Co.
The plant processed and shipped Coca-Cola products until the early 1980s, according to Lieberman, when new owners moved operations from West Broad Street to Lehigh Valley Industrial Park I. The company, which eventually became CocaCola Bottling Co. of the Lehigh Valley, stopped producing soda in 2017 in the Lehigh Valley.
Since Frank Banko bought the property in 1984, the CocaCola building has housed a forklift company (since gone) and a dance studio/performing arts center, which has remained. The lower level, which also abuts West Market Street, includes other businesses, including a soda supply company.
Frank Banko III declined to comment.
The first floor is undergoing much of the approximate $2 million installations of heating and air conditioning systems, electrical systems and more. The building’s roof was also replaced. New office space is being fitted from larger areas. The rents for the Class B offices are expected to average about $900 a month according to Lieberman, and potential uses include an insurance agency and notary service.
Tavarez also installed several additional service bays to give his auto-repair business more space. There, mechanics work beneath large, gray, metal girders from the Coke plant days.
A window-tinting business, Made in the Shade Film Pros, moved into the first floor in June. “I love this location,” said owner Wesley West, who pointed out a white house across West Broad Street. “I grew up in that house, looking at this building. Now I will be looking at the house I grew up in.”
Tavarez said some people — including his wife — told him he was foolish for taking over the old plant, “but for me it was keeping the business going.” He said the prospect of losing the large lot for his towing business would have meant letting go of some employees.
“I thought he was nuts,” Carolina Tavarez said. “I said, ‘Nelson, we will find another lot [if the complex got sold to someone else].’ But he was very persistent.”
Persistence and resourcefulness are two traits evident in the Lehigh Valley couple.
“They care about everything they’re doing and are really locked into the business without looking for all the handouts,” Lieberman said.