Acura dealership moving to Brand

Ryan Carter

Brand Boulevard is seeing more traffic, but the cars aren’t on the

street.

Acura of Pasadena, a car dealership in that city for 18 years, is

moving to Glendale’s Brand Boulevard of Cars, a strip of 15 car

dealerships along Brand, between Colorado Street and San Fernando

Road.

“We’ve got a wonderful opportunity here,” said Jeanne Brewer, the

general manager and owner of Acura of Pasadena. “We’ve maxed out and

outgrown our full potential here. We’re actually going to have a car

lot.”

Though she is moving the dealership to Glendale, Brewer will

retain a service department in Pasadena.

She will lease the space at 505 S. Brand Blvd. Lexus of Glendale,

which is leasing that site, will move to a new 200,000-square-foot,

four-story building on a two-acre site at 1221 S. Brand Blvd. this

summer. Acura is scheduled to move into the 505 S. Brand Blvd. space

soon after.

Brewer said renovations will be minimal, but the dealership will

put up signs that advertise the brand name and will have to receive

city approval for that.

“Acura is a very popular brand of car, and at the higher end of

the market, so it reaffirms that Brand Boulevard of Cars is a good

place to do business,” said Jeanne Armstrong, the city’s development

services director.

Car dealerships bring in about $4.5 million a year to the city in

sales-tax revenue, city officials said.

“It’s a very strong area,” Dave Ahern, the city’s economic

development manager, said of the collection of dealers. “It’s a

one-stop shopping area for cars. It’s like when you go to the

Galleria, it’s a collection of stores, but here you can drive to

Brand, park for free on the street and start shopping. The strength

of the stores is them being together.”

Acura will join other dealerships that are either rebuilding or

renovating their sites along the street. Pacific BMW will soon begin

construction on a new four-story dealership at 800 S. Brand Blvd.

That project will include a 604-car parking garage. The Lexus

dealership will be the largest in the nation -- able to hold 400 cars

-- when it is completed in August, officials said.

Each development costs $12 million to $15 million, Ahern said. A

recent Toyota dealership renovation had a price tag of $2 million,

and the Volkswagen dealership was redone two years ago at a cost of

$3.5 million, Ahern said.