Dick Smith Ford moving to Garners Ferry Road

Longtime Columbia auto dealer Dick Smith will move his Two Notch Road Ford dealership next year to a new site along Garners Ferry Road at the Interstate 77 overpass, the dealership said Tuesday.

Construction of the 43,000-square-foot location at 7201 Garners Ferry Road will begin in August with a grand opening slated for May 1, Brian Smith, dealership CEO, said.

Vestiges of dealerships that once operated at the new site have been razed, and the 7.1-acre site has been cleared, said Brian Smith, who is owner Dick Smith’s son. “This is not the first time we’ve done this,” he said. “We moved our Nissan store into a great, high-traffic count area (9940 Two Notch Road) and had to demolish old buildings and came from the ground up.”

Brian Smith declined to disclose the purchase price of the Garners Ferry Road property or how much is being investment in the new facility. It was bought in March.

The property had been in the Harriet Burnside family since 1964, according to county tax records. The building and site had a taxable value of $2.8 million.

In 2007, Dick Smith purchased what had been the Pulliam Ford dealership at 2800 Two Notch Road when Pulliam declared bankruptcy after nearly four decades at that location. But Smith did not buy the property, Brian Smith said.

“One of the main reasons we’re relocating is that we don’t own the property, but also we wanted to get to a better location for traffic,” he said. “We felt like Garners Ferry Road was a perfect location for the Ford store.

“The traffic count there is probably one of the largest in the city. As far as our business is concerned, for sales and service, we felt like it was an excellent location.”

Dick Smith Ford employs about 80 people and will increase to about 100 workers when it opens next year, Brian Smith said. Both the sales and service departments will be air-conditioned.

“We felt like this was an underserved part of Columbia,” Smith said. “Garners Ferry – that whole area, is being revitalized,” he said. “We look for great areas, not where everybody else is at. That’s what we do.”

This story was originally published July 7, 2015 at 8:58 PM.