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A recent ad campaign stressed the auto center as a shopping destination rather than its individual dealerships. San Bernardino officials say the campaign helped show the city is becoming more business friendly.
Owners of four dealerships at the San Bernardino Auto Center earlier this year decided to try to raise the profile of the place where they do business.
Cliff Cummings, owner of Toyota of San Bernardino and Subaru of San Bernardino, David Choi, owner of All Star Kia of San Bernardino and Larry H. Miller, owner of the Nissan dealership that bears his name, banded together to advertise the auto center.
All three owners will continue to advertise their individual dealerships, said Cummings, who has been selling automobiles in San Bernardino for more than 25 years.
But beginning earlier this year, the trio also began marketing the auto center, which is next to Interstate 215 immediately north Interstate 10.
With sales going well and the auto center about to undergo a major renovation, it’s a good time to try to make the facility – one of San Bernardino’s largest sales tax generators – more of a destination location, similar to the Irvine Auto Center or Cerritos Auto Square.
The campaign was confined to cable television, radio and direct mail. All four agencies – Car Pros Volkswagen of San Bernardino declined to participate – pooled their resources and came up with enough to get the campaign up and running during the first quarter.
In May, $100,000 was spent during a 10-day period.
“We think it’s important to let people know everything that we have here,” said Cummings, who also owns I-10 Toyota in Indio. “They need to know that we’re a one-stop shopping place with a lot of great new and used cars.”
Cummings is on a personal crusade to inform the local business community, as well as the business community beyond the Inland Empire, that San Bernardino is a good place to do business.
Marketing the auto center should help that effort, he said.
For now, the advertising campaign to boost the auto center is over, having expired as planned on May 31. All three dealers will meet and discuss whether to continue advertising the auto center or return to ads that stress individual dealerships, Cummings said.
“We don’t have a date set, but will sit down and talk about it,” Cummings said. “I never predict what auto dealers are going to do, but I just had a good [Memorial Day] weekend and I think the other dealerships did, too. I really hope [the advertising campaign] goes on forever.”
In the meantime, Cummings will spend much of his time and effort on the major overhaul of the auto center, which began about three months ago.
Plans call for the former Scion dealership at 650 Auto Center Drive and the one-time Cadillac dealership 1406 Camino Real to be leveled. Cummings owns both properties, which are across the street from each other and had been vacant for several years.
A new Toyota dealership will occupy the former Scion site, the former Cadillac site will become the Toyota parts and service department and the street between those two sites will be removed and replaced with a service road.
Finally, the current Toyota building at 765 Showcase Drive North will be taken down and replaced with a Subaru dealership.
Despite the rainy weather earlier this year, the two buildings have been demolished and most of the underground work on the $60 million renovation has begun, said Cummings, who is also trying to attract a luxury dealership to the auto center.
The renovation is expected to take about one year to finish.
Cummings is correct that San Bernardino is trying to become pro-business, and so city officials are 100 percent behind the auto center’s renovation and marketing efforts, Councilman Juan Figueroa said.
“The auto mall means a great deal to the city,” said Figueroa, who represents the third ward, where the auto center is located. “It brings in a lot of revenue. I think their marketing campaign will help show that the city is business friendly.”
Auto dealerships have a major financial impact on San Bernardino’s economy. Combined, they generated $2.3 million in sales tax revenue in 2014 and again in 2015, $2.4 million in 2016, $2.6 million in 2017 and $2.4 million last year, according to data provided by Figueroa.
Those numbers include revenue created by Measure Z, a .25 percent district tax approved by San Bernardino voters in November 2006. That tax began in April 2007 and is scheduled to expire in three years, according to the city’s website.
State law prohibits the release of data regarding the sales tax generated by an individual business, Figueroa said.
Over the years, dealers at the San Bernardino Auto Center have occasionally run advertisements that emphasized the auto center rather than their own agencies, but this year was the first time they made a concerted effort to do so, Choi said.
“I think we can make the auto center a destination location,” said Choi, who opened his KIA dealership nine years ago. “It’s possible for people to come here and do one-stop shopping for an automobile, but we need to get the word out.”
The advertising campaign may have helped the Auto Center during the Memorial Day weekend.
“We sold 55 cars, which is a pretty good weekend, and I heard the other agencies also did well,” Choi said.
Cities are well-advised to help auto dealerships because they generate so much tax revenue, starting with sales and property tax, said Jay Prag, professor of economics at Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School of Management.
“Auto dealerships generate revenue and they don’t take up a lot of space, like a shopping mall,” Prag said. “They’re one of the top things cities want to get. There was a time when there were too many of them, but not anymore.”
