The trio of car dealerships that were diagonally across from Montclair Police Headquarters on Bloomfield Avenue for almost 20 years is expected to completely vacate its prominent location by month’s end.
Charlie Cuff, service manager of DCH Auto Group’s Volvo dealership, said that all but five out of about 30 workers already have designated reassignments at one of the corporation’s other locations after Sept. 30, when the dealership is scheduled to shut down. DCH operates 19 New Jersey dealerships.
Corporate representatives made an announcement about Montclair Volvo’s closure at "a little shop meeting" about seven weeks ago, Cuff said.
With the final dealership packing up to leave after 18 years of doing business at that corner, most customers are shocked. Cuff said his 17 employees in the service and parts departments are wrapping up last-minute repairs on customer’s cars.
He was unsure what the rationale for the shutdown was, and said that the decision was made at the corporate level.
The Volvo location was the last of three dealerships left at the site. Gradually, each one closed during the past year. In November 2007, the DCH Lincoln-Mercury dealership closed and in February the Jaguar dealership at 654 Bloomfield Ave. also shut its doors. All three businesses occupied standalone buildings on the same 2.2-acre property, Cuff said. When all of them were in operation, around 50 or 60 people were employed there, he said.
A buyer has not been found for the parcel yet, said Calvin Trevenen, DCH’s lawyer.
A tentative deal, under which an unidentified would-be buyer had intended to build a mixture of residential, office and retail spaces on the lot, collapsed last year, Trevenen said.
"We were unable to work out a satisfactory agreement with the township involving (the Orange Road) Parking Deck," he said.
The deck has served mostly as storage for the three dealerships’ vehicles, while a portion of it has been allocated for public use. During the day, the 78 public spaces on the first floor provide parking for the nearby Board of Education central offices and Montclair Community Pre-K.
DCH, based in Sayreville, paid the roughly $6.3-million bill for the construction of the deck, which was erected five years ago, though the structure is on municipal property, Trevenen said. The company is making payments in lieu of taxes on the property, and this year the payment was approximately $150,000, he said.
Before the parking facility was put up, DCH and municipal officials entered into an agreement stipulating that the parking deck could "only be used in conjunction with the auto-dealership use," Trevenen said.
That 99-year lease would need to be amended, and getting it revised was the obstacle that derailed the previous pending sale. "There is that obvious constraint" on any upcoming redevelopment, Trevenen said.
An asking price for property has not yet been set, and is predicated on a new deck agreement being hammered out. While the DCH parcel is on the market, any redevelopment of it "would contemplate the utilization of the deck" and "developers are reticent to be involved, recognizing there are separate agreements in force" for that facility, Trevenen said.
Although the owner would prefer selling its buildings, DCH has not written off the possibility of bringing in another dealership to replace those that have left. The company "can’t keep hemorrhaging cash to pay for the parking deck lease" while worrying about security and maintenance at its vacated showrooms, Trevenen said.
The exact number of parking spaces that the six-story deck could accommodate isn’t clear. The parking arrangement of the dealerships, which were more or less using the deck as a warehouse managed by their own employees, was informal and unstructured. But if official, striped spaces were added and the deck was opened to the public or to residents of a prospective mixed-use development, then "it could probably hold approximately 400 or more" vehicles, Trevenen estimated.
At a council meeting in early August, Mayor Jerry Fried said he was excited about the potential redevelopment of the parcel. "It offers us a once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity," Fried said, adding that the next use "could be the link that helps create a continuous European-styled urban pedestrian mall" in Montclair Center.
Future redevelopment projects could not only provide a vital source of new property tax revenue, but also draw on Montclair’s strong arts and fine-dining scenes, the mayor said.
As far as the Volvo dealership went, Trevenen said the closure was part of "Volvo’s nationwide program to reduce the number of dealers, especially in the metropolitan area, where Volvo wants to increase the unit sales per outlet.
"This has been in negotiation for over a year" between DCH and the auto manufacturers, he said.
