{"id":4370,"date":"2014-04-22T10:30:11","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T16:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/?p=4370"},"modified":"2014-04-22T08:31:06","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T14:31:06","slug":"whither-urban-car-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/2014\/04\/22\/whither-urban-car-lot\/","title":{"rendered":"Whither the urban car lot?"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Mussell, the general manager of Don Wheaton Motors on Edmonton\u2019s Whyte Avenue, says \u201cthe tendency [for car dealerships] is to not be downtown anymore.\u201d That seems like a painfully obvious observation in 2014, but it has not always been the case. In 1930, Edmonton Motors, the city\u2019s oldest car dealership, built what was then the province\u2019s largest indoor garage, and it built it right downtown at 100 Street and 102 Avenue. But as time marched forward and the city grew more congested, in 1955 Edmonton Motors retreated west to Oliver, then an Edmonton suburb. In recent years several other dealerships have similarly fled the downtown coop, the most recent being Crosstown Motors and Healy Ford. Today, aside from several small-fry used car lots, Edmonton has but three remaining car dealerships one might call \u2018urban\u2019 \u2013 Edmonton Motors, now surrounded by an increasingly dense and downtown-like portion of Jasper Ave., Ericksen Nissan, near the Royal Alexandra Hospital, and Don Wheaton, on Whyte, the city\u2019s most bustling pedestrian boulevard. As Edmonton and other cities add density to their cores and as land becomes scarcer, are we nearing the end of the urban car dealership? Some say yes; others, however, see a surprisingly bright future for downtown car dealerships.<\/p>\n

\"Edmonton<\/a>
Edmonton Motors on Jasper Avenue. Provincial Archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Harrison Wolfe, assistant general manager with Edmonton Motors, says a downtown car dealership no longer makes sense in Edmonton. Wolfe, a third-generation descendent of F.J. Wolfe, who founded Edmonton Motors in 1925, says motorists have by and large moved to the suburbs. \u201cAt one point in time, it did make sense [to have a dealership downtown] when the downtown was the hub,\u201d he says. \u201cBut today, the average car buyer has no draw to come into the downtown, other than to come into work. It\u2019s an uphill battle to sell a vehicle in the downtown marketplace versus somebody that\u2019s in a residential area. If I\u2019m going to leave work, I\u2019m going to go home, grab the kids and go car shopping as close as I can to my house.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Edmonton Motors moved from downtown to Oliver in 1955, it was then on the outskirts of Edmonton, Wolfe says. The city has risen up all around it ever since, and that has made life difficult for the dealership. \u201cAs far as the way it\u2019s going right now, Edmonton\u2019s downtown is expanding,\u201d Wolfe says. \u201cWith the land values the way they are, there\u2019s two dealers left downtown. We can\u2019t expand, we have no place to go. I\u2019m sitting on two acres and I need eight. I\u2019m renting property, and space in the Healy Building, to store my units.\u201d In 2008, a small church to the east of Edmonton Motors was knocked down and the company now rents the land. But Wolfe says it\u2019s not enough. \u201cThere\u2019s no place to go downtown anymore, and it\u2019s getting smaller. If you take a look at what [similar] land is being used for, it\u2019s for a high-rise. That\u2019s eventually what\u2019s going to have to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Photo by Craig Moffat Photography \/ CC BY-NC-ND<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Will Wheaton sees the future of the urban car dealership differently. Wheaton is the son of Don Wheaton Sr. (who died in 2012), whose iconic Chevrolet dealership has been on Whyte Ave. since 1961. Wheaton says Don Wheaton Motors has learned to live with its space restrictions over the years, yet concedes land costs are an issue. To build a car dealership in a downtown location, Wheaton says, would be difficult today thanks to land scarcity. And because car customers walk in and want a certain model in a certain colour, right now, space for inventory is a car dealership\u2019s most critical resource. While Wheaton\u2019s flagship dealership on Whyte \u2013 self-conscious of its throwback vibe, with its 1960s\u00a0 muscle cars in the indoor showroom and 1950\u2019s stylized neon signs \u2013 isn\u2019t going anywhere, he says that\u2019s made possible in the same way that Wolfe does it, through using car storage lots. And later this year, Sun Toyota, a used-car dealership that Wheaton owns on a less central area of Whyte Ave., will retreat to a more suburban, car-focused area along Calgary Trail, where space is easier to come by.<\/p>\n

Still, Wheaton is far from giving up on the viability of an urban car dealership. \u201cI would view that the downtown now, with the development we\u2019re seeing \u2013 more density through condos and everything else \u2013 there\u2019s probably a trend for people moving into the core,\u201d he says. \u201cSo the prospects [for a downtown car dealership], in my view, are better than they have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

This post originally appeared at Alberta Venture<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tim Querengesser is the senior editor of Alberta Venture<\/em> magazine and the head of The Edmonton Wayfinding Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Mussell, the general manager of Don Wheaton Motors on Edmonton\u2019s Whyte Avenue, says \u201cthe tendency [for car dealerships] is to not be downtown anymore.\u201d That seems like a painfully obvious observation in 2014, but it has not always been the case. In 1930, Edmonton Motors, the city\u2019s oldest car dealership, built what was thenContinue reading “Whither the urban car lot?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8123,"featured_media":4374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20,26,27,29],"tags":[206,205,207,204,208],"class_list":["post-4370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-infrastructure","category-neighbourhoods","category-streetscape","category-traffic","category-urban-design","tag-car-dealership","tag-car-lot","tag-oliver","tag-urban","tag-whyte-ave"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhither the urban car lot? - Spacing Edmonton<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/2014\/04\/22\/whither-urban-car-lot\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Tim Querengesser\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/2014\/04\/22\/whither-urban-car-lot\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/2014\/04\/22\/whither-urban-car-lot\/\",\"name\":\"Whither the urban car lot? 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