Mark Miller investing $20 million in new SLC Toyota dealership

Enterprise, The, Sep 17, 2007 by Rattle, Barbara

Utah auto dealer Mark Miller is investing more than $20 million in a new Toyota dealership on property in Salt Lake City formerly occupied by Larry Miller Ford Downtown.

Mark Miller Dealerships has purchased the six-acre former Ford property at 730 S. West Temple from the Larry H. Miller Group and has sold its 160,000 square foot Toyota building at 84 W. 700., plus a used car facility directly south, to Capital Automotive, a McClean, Va.based real estate investment trust from which the Toyota dealership will lease back the properties until November 2011.

Bountiful-based general contractor Sahara Inc. has begun demolishing portions of the formet Ford facility, which will be replaced with an environmentally friendly Toyota dealership that will be among the first in the nation to be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, part of a plan by Toyota Motor Corp. to see all its 1,241 U.S. dealerships construct new eco-friendly buildings.

Mark Miller, chairman of Mark Miller Dealerships, said he hopes to take occupancy of the updated new Toyota facility next May.

"It's quite an undertaking," he said, estimating its cost at "north of $20 million."

"It's a major renovation," he said. "We're going to save the roof and the service and parts department. Everything else will be brand new. We're going to remodel it into a LEED-certified building. As far as we can tell it will be the third Toyota dealership in the country to do that. Because of LEED, we're doing all sorts of fun things. We'll have an express lube that will be part of the main facility, so we'll triple our capacity there. We'll double the capacity of our service drive, we'll have a much enlarged state-of-the-art customer waiting area including a cafe, like a mini-Starbucks with coffee and sandwiches and that kind of thing. We'll have a couple of kids' play areas that will be pretty substantial. We'll add a car wash."

While the new dealership will be a "huge investment" for Miller - and for other Toyota dealers nationwide when they embark on their projects - "one of the things that's fun about Toyota is they've said if we'll build these facilities and grow with them, they won't significantly add to the dealer body, which I think is a pretty remarkable statement in this day and age," Miller said, pointing to the nation's approximately 4,000 Ford dealers and 5,000 Chevrolet dealers. "It really is a partnership instead of an arm's-length agreement."

The new facility was necessary not only because the Toyota dealership has outgrown its existing one-acre of facilities, but also because the present building's size presents a problem due to the large size of Toyota's new Tundra full-size truck.

Mark Miller Dealerships was launched in 1975 with a facility that sold Pontiac and Subaru vehicles. Since then, it has grown to include Buick, Toyota and Scion. Miller said the group has gross annual revenues of roughly $180 million and employs approximately 215 people.