WESTMINSTER — Everyone is on a first-name basis with Faith Mba.
The owner of Faith’s Toyota marked the start of a 14-month, $15 million construction project that will see the venerable Westminster car dealership move into a brand new, dual-entrance (Toyota and Ford) 30,000-square-foot building.
Mba is a native of Nigeria and is one of only about 30 African-Americans who own car dealerships in the United States, according to Automotive News. Mba said the new dealership will be built on land immediately north of the existing 65-year-old building, which has been expanded repeatedly over the years.
The new building will be facing south, with new entrances off Route 5.
“Thank you my employees and family,” he said Thursday. “We took the long road and it wasn’t easy.”
It will be a “brand new building from the ground up,” with an expanded showroom, more service bays and an emphasis on electric vehicles, said Dan Ray, vice president of Jewett Construction Co., of Freemont, N.H. Jewett is the firm that will be managing the construction – and demolition – project. Ray said the company specializes in car dealerships, and business is good.
He said it was Mba’s decision to emphasize the “electrification” of cars in the new dealership.
Ray said that Jewett began talking with Mba two years ago about his plans for a new dealership, and that Mba wanted to incorporate many ideas from his employees into the final design.
“He is willing to listen to his staff,” Ray said, “and we’re not talking about the size of the breakroom.”
There were, he said, “a lot of late nights” at Jewett.
On Thursday, with a row of shiny shovels stuck in a mound of dirt and flanked by two Bazin Brothers’ pieces of equipment, Mba, his family and his business cohorts dug in. Bazin Brothers will be doing the earthwork for the project, according to Ray.
With a new Act 250 state land use permit in hand, issued about two weeks ago, Mba said he made such a pest of himself with the state land use people, they told him to stop calling. There was worry about the impact on the bordering Connecticut River, Mba said. “It wasn’t easy,” he said.
According to Ray, the process was shepherded by the firm’s consulting engineer, DeWolfe Engineering, and things went very smoothly.
Mba said that Toyota and Ford customers are very loyal, with many of the Ford customers dating back to the early 1960s, the beginning of the Westminster dealership.
Then called Fall Mountain Motors, the Potter brothers added the Toyota line, car by car. The now-popular make was in short supply back then and every time a Toyota car was sold, a Fall Mountain salesman had to get on the bus and go to Boston headquarters to bring back a vehicle, recalled retired car salesman Peter Harrison of Westminster, who came to watch the festivities. Harrison retired in 2000, he said.
COVID-19 took its toll with an enormous nationwide impact on the production and availability of new vehicles, but the dealership has rebounded. It sells more Toyota vehicles than Ford, employees said. Mba said he sold his Brattleboro Ford dealership, and instead focuses on the dual dealership in Westminster.
Ray said the $15 million price tag for the new building includes the “soft costs” of construction – planning and permitting as well as building. He said the Act 250 process was “extremely smooth,” and he credited the work of DeWolfe Engineering of Montpelier to get the project its permits. The building is a conventional steel-frame industrial building. “There’s no wood anywhere,” he said, except in some of the offices.
“It’s a testament to DeWolfe,” Ray said, noting that negotiating with two different car dealers – Toyota and Ford – also took some time.
According to the project’s Act 250 permit, the actual construction costs are $7.7 million, with the other costs coming for site preparation, landscaping, and roads and parking. The current building will be demolished, he said.
