A national online car dealership is opening a Columbus location. Here are the details
A national used car dealership that conducts business primarily online has plans to open a Columbus location, if a rezoning application is approved.
EchoPark Automotive — which has locations across the U.S., including Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina and Greenville, South Carolina — will open its location in a vacant lot on 6100 Whitesville Road, the site of a former BB&T bank next to a Circle K gas station and Bradley Park Crossing shopping center.
That’s according to Slaton Whatley, director of operations for Whatley Oil and Auto Parts, the company that owns the property.
“It’s all used vehicles, low-mileage, relatively new,” Whatley said. “They don’t sell 15-year-old cars with 100,000 mileage. ... I was actually looking earlier today, and I struggled to find anything older than 2017.”
The chain, which is part of the larger Sonic Automotive, is based in Charlotte just like its parent company. It allows customers to buy, sell or trade used vehicles online or in-store and look up competitors’ prices on mobile devices inside the dealerships.
The property will serve as an EchoPark fulfillment center, Whatley said; when customers purchase a car online, they pick it up at one of the fulfillment locations.
The business model is similar to Carvana, with the exception that EchoPark does not deliver the vehicle to the buyer’s house.
“You order the car and, overnight, they ship the car to this location,” Whatley said.
When might it open?
The company’s rezoning application must be approved first, and that could take a while: It’s not had its first council reading yet, and the zoning checklist is just 20% complete.
If the rezoning is approved, EchoPark will need to complete some interior work on the building, Whatley said. There’s bulletproof glass still mounted inside, plus a vault.
Whatley told the L-E that EchoPark will use the existing bank building for its operations, meaning it won’t need to be demolished. And there won’t be any structural changes such as knocking down walls, he said It will be mainly “aesthetic work,” to match the building’s colors with EchoPark’s green and white color palette.
“There won’t be any major changes,” Whatley said. “We’re not building anything else on the property.”
Whatley said, based on conversations “a few months ago,” that depending on when rezoning finalizes, EchoPark is gunning for the first quarter of 2022 as a targeted opening date.
“It should be relatively quick once the rezoning happens,” he said.
This story was originally published November 4, 2021 at 11:57 AM.
