Multilayered real estate deal is bringing together three businesses that cater
to auto enthusiasts in one location

BY BILL HETHCOCK | STAFF WRITER

Three companies have banded together to create an auto aficionado’s paradise on a 3-acre site on Denton Drive south of Love Field. It was a complicated real estate deal that involved a land sale, a lease and demolition of an old warehouse, among other things, said Wayne Swearingen, president of Barclay Commercial Group Inc., which handled the transactions. Construction started in November and completion is scheduled for May on a 71,500-square-foot facility that will house Dream Garage, AutoScope and eCarLink. When complete, Dream Garage will offer luxury garage suites for car collectors. Autoscope will offer luxury and exotic car repair and detailing, and concierge services for garage-suite owners. And eCarLink will have a showroom for the premium, pre-owned autos it sells on the Internet.
The series of events that led to the partrepresent the firm in its hunt for an acre of land with good frontage for a third location. The company has locations at 601 Coit Road in Plano and 9796 Ferguson Road in Dallas. Swearingen, a friend of Autoscope president Nerces Mavelian, involved fellow Barclay broker Jack Griffin, who has an extensive car collection and an auto racing background. Over the next few months, Swearingen and Griffin determined that the area south of Love Field was transi- tioning from warehouse and manufacturing to auto-related businesses, including luxury car dealerships, which tend to cluster, Swearingen said.

Sweet spot
Griffin’s and Swearingen’s market study found Lemmon Avenue and Inwood Road was the center of the auto-related cluster. But the limited number of small sites there Just to the west, though, Denton Drive was being upgraded to a major boulevard between Inwood Road and Mockingbird Lane. Barclay Commercial found a 3-acre site with an old warehouse on it at 6124 Denton Drive. But there was a problem with that site, too, because it was too big for Autoscope alone. Griffin, a commercial real estate veteran whose car collection includes seven classic Porsches and a vintage Volkswagen Beetle, had long dreamed of developing a facility to house exotic auto collections. Griffin displays his collection in a 3,000-square- foot garage at his Dallas home. “I’ve had so many people tell me ‘I’d love to have a facility like this, but I don’t have the space,’ or ‘My wife won’t let me,’” Griffin said recently as he gave a tour of his garage. Griffin enlisted partners Travis Blalock and Jerry Mooty of the Dallas real estate Dream Garage will provide upscale “car condos” — climate-controlled suites of 1,400 to 2,300 square feet with sprinkler systems and amenities such as private restrooms, wet bars, entertaining space and mezzanine lofts overlooking the car collections. The 25 suites at Dream Garage will be similar to the garage he’s built at his home, only much nicer, Griffin said. “(Dream Garage) won’t be a place where you store your car and forget about it,” Griffin said. “It’s more like an art gallery. It’s a place where you enjoy your car and use it. It’s a social venue — a hangout for car people. It’s like a country club for cars.”

Bringing it together
The Dream Garage partners turned their attention to the Denton Drive site. Mean- while, in June 2006, Autoscope signed a letter of intent to buy one acre of frontagefrom Dream Garage, if Dream Garage purchased the site. Three months later, eCarLink hired Swearingen and J.C. Adams of Barclay
Commercial to help the company lease or buy a new location for its eBay-based auto sales operation. The principals of eCarLink, Brett Stacy and Len Critcher initially had targeted Addison, but the Love Field area soon moved to the top of their list. In January 2007, Dream Garage purchased the 3-acre site for an undisclosed price. Six months later, Autoscope bought their acre of frontage from Dream Garage. Barclay Commercial then introduced the principals of eCarLink to Dream Ga- rage’s backers, and in October negotiated a 12,000-square-foot lease for an eCarLink showroom in the front of the auto storage facility. eCarLink signed a five-year lease with two five-year options. “What I loved was Jack’s vision of creating a car enthusiast’s destination,” Critcher said. “We wanted to join a quality group and be part of a quality concept. It all just made sense.” Swearingen said it was one of themost complex deals he’s coordinated in more than 40 years in the business. “It was a very unique real estate venture,” Swearingen said. “It took more than two years before it all came together. It worked out well because all of the pieces complement each other.” So far, nine of the 25 Dream Garage suites have been reserved, Griffin said. The suites are priced from $3,500 to $5,500 a month through long-term lease arrangements, usually five years or more. The construction cost will be about $10 million for Dream Garage and about $5 million for the Autoscope part of the building, Griffin said. He said he hopes to use the Dallas deal as a prototype that TreVista will develop in other cities.

eCarLink to open store at Dream Garage
Saturday, December 1, 2007 The Dallas Morning News

Dream Garage USA has signed a long-term lease with Texas-based eCarLink for a high-end automotive boutique in the flagship Dream Garage-Dallas location, scheduled to open in spring.

eCarLink, one of the first Internet-marketed automotive dealerships in the U.S., wil be the venture’s anchor tenant and occupy 12,000 square feet of the facility’s 18,000 square feet of retail space. eCarLink brings a vibrant sales operation featuring the world’s finest marques of Luxury, sport and exotic vehicles, Dream Garage executives say. The retail location also is expected to open in spring.

“We’re pleased to offer our clientele the opportunity to purchase their newest dream car through this relationship with the eCarLink team.” Says Jack Griffin, a principle at Dream Garage USA. “Our goal is to build communities that cater to the automotive lifestyle and eCarLink represents the best in their field. Thanks to the creative talents of Len Critcher and Brett Stacy, their retail location will be like any other in the region. This is the perfect fit because both of our companies were built on the foundation of delivering premium products through world-class service.”

Dream Garage is a national group of luxury garage suites that plan to feature secure, upscale, private automotive residences for prized collections. Each Dream Garage will feature a repair facility specializing in the maintenance and repair of exotic, luxury and classic automobiles. In addition, each location will include a retail shopping area and concierge service that caters to the needs of automobile enthusiasts.

eCarLink was founded by Mr. Critcher and Mr. Stacy. They were among the first to capitalize on automotive Internet marketing by lowering overhead and selling direct directly to consumers, bypassing traditional sales people and finance managers.

“Since 2001 we’ve pioneered online marketing strategies for luxury automobiles that have led to more than 6,000 sales worldwide by our team,” says Mr. Critcher, eCarLink president. “Dream Garage is the right idea at the right time, and it’s also led by people who are passionate about the automotive industry.”

The eCarLink retail boutique will reflect the company’s online roots and feature a hi-tech, digital theme similar to its online presence. Traditional sales cubicles and back offices will be replaced with a classic bar and stools, plasma touch screen to view inventory and an all-digital paperwork closing process. Clients can take their time to study and compare the cars or can be in and out in a matter of minutes.

“Clients can shop our online inventory in a very nonthreatening way, absent the pressure that can come with sales people,” Mr. Critcher says.

Dream Garage-Dallas will be located near Love Field in Dallas. Construction began in August. Details about eCarLink, headquartered in Addison, can be found at www.ecarlink.com.

OutFront
Wheels of Fortune
Jonathan Fahey, 01.06.03
The biggest used-car lot in the world is right there on your computer, courtesy of Ebay.

Len W. Critcher, 28, is a used-car dealer who doesn't have to buy balloons. He doesn't even have to wear a plaid suit. Instead, every month he sells 45 cars worth $1 million out of a pair of airplane hangars at a private Dallas airport--all on Ebay. "I get to run a dealership but not be that guy, the dealer," crows Critcher, an entrepreneur who gets his cars from a local franchise dealerships.

Critcher is one of legions of dealers--including big full-service dealers--who are now routinely using Ebay Motors to sell used vehicles. The rapid growth has surprised even Ebay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ), known more for its tchotchkes than cars. Ebay figures that it will close 2002 with $3 billion of vehicles and parts auctioned on its site, double the 2001 volume. Dealers account for about half of Ebay Motors' listings, individual sellers the rest. The big surprise: People are happy to buy an expensive product online that traditionally they liked to inspect firsthand. "We never thought it would take off like this,"says Stephanie Tilenius, general manager of Ebay Motors.

For all of Ebay's growth, it has just 0.6% of the $363 billion used car market, selling 300,000 of an estimated 42 million used cars in 2002. But those listings are especially lucrative for Ebay. The company gets an average of $60 per car listed compared with $1.62 for other items. A seller pays $40 to list a car and another $40 if it is sold. Steven Weinstein, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, predicts Ebay Motors will contribute $91 million (including revenue from motorcycles, parts and listings that don't sell) to Ebay's 2002 sales of $1.2 billion, rising to $151 million in 2003.

It's sufficiently lucrative that Ebay is about to draw its first serious competitor. AutoTrader.com, the online classified site owned by Cox Enterprises, announced a Jan. 1 launch of its own auction. AutoTrader ended a marketing agreement with Ebay to get into the business by itself, but neither side is talking about the breakup. AutoTrader, well known for its extensive advertising, won't charge a sell fee and will allow some winning bidders to see the car in person before buying.

For dealers, Ebay is a simple proposition: a cheap way to reach throngs of buyers. Normally dealers have to spend $500 in marketing money to get someone to walk into a showroom. For that $40 listing fee, they get an average of eight people bidding. Dealers don't have to spend hours haggling their way to a profit, and they can turn over inventory faster.

All of this, presumably, should lower costs for buyers, while giving them convenience they don't get driving from lot to lot looking. At any given moment you can find 20,000 cars listed. You can use an advanced search to paw through the list, specifying, for example, that you want to see all 1996 Pontiac Trans-Ams for less than $10,000 offered by sellers in your region.

At BMW of Peoria, Ill., one of seven dealerships owned by Sam Leman Automotive, Internet Sales Manager Kenneth Reardon says he can sell top-end trade-ins for higher prices to buyers on the coasts than he can off his lots in the Midwest. In December he shipped cars to Arizona, California, Maine, Maryland and Utah. "Snow's getting ready to fly here, so you can't move a convertible," he says. "But we get them for cheap and sell them somewhere warm."

Ebay stops working well for Reardon on big-volume cars like Fords, Pontiacs and Jeeps. "There's just too many on the site for us to distinguish ourselves," he says. One Friday in December there were 194 Jeep Grand Cherokees for sale. Shipping ($1,000 coast to coast) is prohibitive for humdrum models. But the buyer can always drive the vehicle home. Sellers, especially dealers, often offer to help get license plates and meet a buyer at an airport.

Either side can pay $100 to have an independent agent drive the car a few miles and verify the condition. Best, buyers can look at uncensored feedback from people who have bought from the seller in the past. As Critcher notes, "Could you just imagine if you walked into a dealership and could see their feedback posted on the wall?" s