American Toyota ready for expansion
For some time, the corner of Alameda NE and Pan American Freeway was chewed up because of road construction. But customers of Larry H. Miller’s American Toyota were still able to find their way into the dealership.
Now those customers will have new construction with which to deal, but this time the payoff will be a new state-of-the-art building for the dealership itself, said Brad Holmes, director of construction for Miller Family Real Estate.
The new building will be about 80,000 square feet – almost 25 percent larger than the current building — and cost about $12 million, he said.
“It’s going to be a pretty big building,” Holmes said.
Under Toyota’s corporate guidelines and image requirements, a major remodel was due anyway, he said.
And “as we see growth over the next 10 to 15 years, we have to get larger to accommodate the customer base with expected growth in business in Albuquerque,” Holmes said.
So constructing a new building just made sense, he said.
The new building will be built on the northeast end of the dealership’s current lot, requiring the construction be done in phases.
“There’s going to be some overlap,” Holmes said. “But the store will stay open and 100 percent operational” through the construction stages.
The building will feature a large showroom taking up about a quarter of the space. “It will be much bigger and nicer than what we currently have, more up-to-date,” he said, featuring such amenities as free Wi-Fi and charging stations for electronic devices.
The service station will have 62 bays, about 50 percent more than the current location, as well as a number of detail bays and an on-site carwash, Holmes said.
Earthwork is already underway, and actual construction is expected to start soon on the project’s first phase, which will be the service area.
The entire project, which is using a local general contractor, should be completed by the last quarter of 2016, he said.