The approval of another used-car dealership on Broadway in Merrillville led to a moratorium on them for the foreseeable future, at least along the town’s main artery.
The Town Council at its Tuesday night meeting approved 5-0 — with Council President Rick Bella and Councilwoman Marge Uzelac absent — for Woods Cross, Utah-based Autosavvy to bring an up to 300-vehicle used car dealership to the property at 6419 Broadway. Autosavvy, its chief operating officer Rich Jackson said, is the country’s largest seller of branded-title vehicles, or those that’ve been rebuilt after a major accident or other serious issue.
The dealerships, Jackson said, deal with vehicles that are no more than five years old and neither repair nor restore them onsite. In keeping within five years, Autosavvy is able to give consumers the best value for a depreciating asset, and often saves people at least $6,000 on used-car prices, he said.
As well, the dealership, which has already established itself in Fishers, isn’t a “Buy Here-Pay Here” dealership as many used-car dealerships are, he said. Additionally, Autosavvy calls itself “carbon neutral” and has a program that sees 75 trees planted for every car sold, Jackson said. So far, the company has planted 250,000 trees, he said.
“We’ve never opened up a dealership and just left it,” Jackson told the council. “We’re here to stay if we’re allowed.”
Councilman Leonard White, D-7, in whose district the dealership falls, said that while he doesn’t want to turn down business coming to Merrillville, he also doesn’t want Broadway to turn into “Cicero Avenue” in Illinois. He said he was also concerned of vehicle quality and relayed the troubles he encountered with buying a used truck that came from Canada. He asked that the dealership appear before the council in six months and again in a year for updates as a condition to approve.
Councilman Shawn Pettit, D-6, took the council’s concerns a step further.
“I say this is the last used dealership we approve on Broadway for a while,” he said. “We’ve put moratoriums on multi-family housing and other things before, so why not this?”
Councilman Jeff Minchuk, D-3, wanted to take the motion a step further and extend the moratorium townwide, but Pettit said the town hadn’t getting calls from dealerships wanting to be other places. The moratorium, which appeared to be open-ended and was also approved 5-0, will extend the town’s length of Broadway.
In other business, the town did the following:
— Completed the purchase of a 10-acre strip of land on Vigo Street in the Sandpiper subdivision with Stormwater funds to return to the town’s inventory; and
— Heard from Economic Development Director about the progress of the Silos at Sanders project, including Lake County’s first one million square-foot warehouse, which should be up and running by third quarter of 2023 and is expected to bring the town $9 million in revenue.