Valencia dealership set to open as flurry of projects continues.

A new luxury car showroom originally set to finish construction early last year in the Valencia Auto Mall is set to open this spring.

Work is expected to finish by the end of March on the state-of-the-art Valencia BMW dealership at Cinema Drive and Valencia Boulevard, said dealer operator Gary Marco.

The dealer bought the 6.3-acre property, which sits behind the William S. Hart PONY Baseball Center and near a Mercedes-Benz dealership that opened in December 2005, from The Newhall Land and Farming Co. in October 2004.

The project was originally scheduled to open last year, but was hampered by some holdups, Marco said.

"We had some weather delays and an elevator has been late," he said.

The dealership is currently based on about two acres at 24030 Creekside Road and has been one of the better performing operations in the Santa Clarita Valley, selling 1,214 vehicles and reporting revenues topping $82.5 million in 2005.

With those kinds of numbers, Marco, who also serves as president of the Santa Clarita Valley Auto Dealers Association, said they wanted more room. "We have been cramped and need this," he said.

During the third quarter of 2006 new registration of cars and light trucks in California--the largest market in the nation--dropped 7.6 percent versus a year prior, according to the most recent statistics from the California Motor Car Dealers Association.

Creating an auto row

The new dealership is the latest in a flurry of projects in and near the Valencia Auto Row, which runs along Creekside Road between McBean Parkway and Valencia Boulevard on property that Newhall Land started selling to auto dealers in the 1990s.

Today, the street and 102 nearby acres is home to a dozen dealers and is a major economic engine for the city and region--in 2005, auto sales represented 22.9 percent of Santa Clarita's total annual sales tax revenues, around $6 million. As a result, the city has funded a marketing campaign to lure area residents to purchase cars locally.

Nearby, at Creekside Road and Valencia Boulevard, Frontier Toyota is erecting a new showroom and service center. SCV Motors Inc. also recently replaced its Volkswagen brands with better-performing Nissan vehicles.

Those projects and the new BMW operation are a major win for the city, said Larry Mankin, president of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce.

"Those are the kinds of projects that have little impact on the environment and the employment base ... but they're huge cash cows for the city," he said. "Which means more police and parks."

But Don Fleming, vice president of the local dealers association, pointed out that with every expansion, valuable land had been taken off the market. They're running out of space, he said.

"We have almost all franchises now," he said, "but now there's no land."

By CHRIS COATES 

Staff Reporter