The Mishawaka Common Council Monday night will consider some zoning variances that a longtime local car dealer needs to move from Grape Road to the Capital Avenue corridor.
Van Gurley and Mike Leep Sr. first started selling new Dodges together in 1973 in Highland, in northwest Indiana. Four years later they opened their first local franchise, a Buick dealership, in South Bend.
Today, Gurley-Leep, with 22 dealerships across five states, plans to vacate their two lots on Grape Road and build a new 8-dealership auto mall on 72 acres of farmland northwest of Capital Avenue and Cleveland Road. On Monday the Mishawaka Common Council will consider some zoning variances the project needs. They concern how close buildings and interior roads can be to the site’s borders, and how many trees they’ll need to plant along the site’s perimeter.
Gurley-Leep plans to build nine buildings, with interior roads and three roundabouts. They’ll also have a used car building, a building housing a maintenance and body shop, and a car wash.
It was unclear when Gurley-Leep will break ground or what might become of the huge Grape Road sites they’ll vacate. Gurley-Leep does not publicly list a phone number for their corporate office, and a representative at their Mercedes-Benz dealership declined to provide one when contacted by WVPE Friday.
