The Mishawaka Common Council Monday night approved the final zoning variances needed by Gurley-Leep Automotive Group to move from Grape Road to some farmland along Capital Avenue.
Company president Mike Leep Jr. says their lease on Grape Road is expiring soon, so they’ve been carefully planning the move for at least four years.
“It just made a lot of sense for us to centralize everything, all of our Grape Road locations, into one area,” Leep says. “And it’s really also just a more convenient location. We’re right off the Toll Road, we’re right off Capital Avenue, right down from State Road 23.”
Leep says the auto mall will combine eight dealerships at one site, with amenities for when customers are having service work done like walking paths, a dog park with a dog wash, a golf simulator and a small restaurant.
Leep says he’s aware of the criticism the project has received from some online commenters who don’t like losing 72 acres of farmland to a car lot. But he says it will be much more than a car lot.
“We don’t take the sprawl or that lightly but they’re larger facilities that it takes to sell and service cars so it does require quite a bit of land to do that," Leep says. "We want to be in a convenient location. We want to be environmentally responsible. We’re going to be planting about 300 trees on this property, and as we’ve gone through this development process, we’ve kind of had this concept that’s kind of been our guiding light, that we want it to feel like a park and not a parking lot.
“It is going to allow us to do things for our guests that we couldn’t do if we were just in all different locations. Things like, we wouldn’t go out and build six dog parks if we had our dealerships at six different locations, and then you couldn’t support having like a cafe or restaurant at six different dealerships, but we can support these amenities for our guests when we bring it all together.”
Some of those online commenters fear the move will leave big holes on Grape Road. Leep says he’s aware of the challenges that brick-and-mortar retail faces these days but says he isn’t so sure people have much to worry about, at least ultimately. The Grape Road sites are owned by Capital Automotive REIT, a publicly traded Virginia-based company that leases land to auto dealers.
“I’ve seen where they’ve sat a little bit first before they end up getting redeveloped and I’ve also seen where they get redeveloped immediately, so it just all depends on the market. I think retail is still strong. You know, obviously the internet has changed a lot. But when I look out here on a Friday afternoon and see how many people are driving up and down the street or on a Saturday, there’s things people want to see and touch and feel before they buy them.”
Leep says they’ll break ground this fall and plan to open about two years later in 2027.
