The addition will house two new buildings, a new Audi dealership and a new Jaguar-Land Rover dealership. Rand Cowell, vice president of Cowell Auto Group, said the change is necessary because of the growth in Richmond’s population.
“Really taking a look at how the community’s grown over the last 20 years and our need for taking care of our customers, the community’s grown to such a huge point and so has the demand for premium luxury brands out there,” said Rand.
According to statistics on the City of Richmond website, Richmond grew from 174,461 people in 2006 to an estimated 207,500 people in 2014.
When the facilities were first built in the Richmond Auto Mall, they weren’t designed to handle the number of customers that they see now, said Ryan Cowell, the company’s president of development.
“For us, the challenge has been when we opened up our Jaguar-Land Rover and our Audi facility, they were built for a lower volume,” said Ryan. “And the volumes...have grown significantly, so we had to expand the Richmond Auto Mall in order to get a larger piece of property to handle the volume.”
The vertical design is a new approach, and the Cowells had to work closely with the manufacturers to push for the plan they wanted, going as far as getting approval from the brands’ head offices in Germany and the United Kingdom.
“The process that we have to go through is that the manufacturers have a certain design to follow... Some of [our concepts] were a little out of the box, and our manufacturers didn’t really understand and we had to push the design on that.”
The Cowells believe that this addition to the auto mall will be beneficial to the complex and the city going forward.
“To me, this just represents what has happened to the city of Richmond,” said Rand. “This will be a market-leading facility for all of our brands, Jaguar, Audi, and Land Rover, in Canada. That really represents the importance of Richmond, not only in the Metro Vancouver marketplace, but the Canadian marketplace.”
“It also strengthens the Richmond Auto Mall as one of the best places to purchase and service your vehicle,” added Ryan. “I think this sets up the Richmond Auto Mall for the future because now there’s the right amount of space for everyone.”
Gail Terry, general manager of the Richmond Auto Mall, agreed.
“This expansion will keep us at the leading edge as innovators in our province — Canada even. We were the first auto mall outside of the United States; we’ve always been ahead of the curve and this will keep us moving in that direction,” she said.
The expansion will be built on what was formerly an industrial park that backed onto Knight Street behind the auto mall. They are also adding a new road, Parkwood Crescent, for easy access to each of the different dealerships.
Cowell will then move its Volkswagen dealership into the old Audi buildings, which will be renovated after the expansion is complete.
Expectations are the expanded dealerships will be open in late 2016.
