Desert Buick GMC has been renamed to include Speck brand

The owners of C. Speck Motors Inc.

have bought another established car dealership in the region, bringing their

total number of dealerships to five.

The sale of Desert Buick GMC at 2910

W. Clearwater Ave. in Kennewick resulted in an immediate rebranding to Speck

Buick GMC. It’s now the second Speck dealership in the Tri-Cities. The company

owns Speck Hyundai in Pasco, as well as dealerships in Sunnyside, Grandview and

Prosser.

Katy Moore said Ken Hays, the previous

owner of Desert Buick GMC, was retiring after 27 years in the business, and

knew she was an interested party in buying his dealership.

“We made a deal on franchises and

land, and I applied to GM to be the dealer,” Moore said. She added that the

deal could have been finalized before the end of the year, but both parties

decided it was better to wait until early January to close on the sale. She

declined to disclose the purchase price.

The dealership is at 2910 W.

Clearwater Ave., near the intersection of West Clearwater Avenue, Highway 395

and Vista Way, across from the Highlands Shopping Center.

C. Speck Motors represents multiple

brands by a slew of automakers, including Chevrolet, Nissan, Chrysler, Jeep,

Dodge, Ram, Buick and Hyundai.

Moore took over the company when she

bought her father out in 2000, and then started the Hyundai franchise in 2002

with her husband, J.P. Moore. They added Hall Chevrolet Buick in Prosser in

2008.

The Moores also bought and sold a

dealership in Walla Walla along the way, before making two recent purchases,

including Mid-Valley Chrysler Jeep Dodge in fall 2018, and now Desert Buick GMC

in early 2019.

After two acquisitions in just four

months, Katy Moore said there aren’t any immediate plans to expand again.

“We’re going to settle in with these

two transactions and really concentrate and focus on our systems. We’re not

going to purchase anything for a while,” she said.

The company has taken on about 25

additional employees with the purchase of the Kennewick dealership, totaling

about 150 across all five locations. Moore said she’s working through “getting

these facilities to where we want them to be. GM has some facility requirements

and we’re still processing how we’re going to represent GMC Buick in this

marketplace.”

As for the Moore’s other recent

purchase in Grandview, plans are underway to build a new facility and move the

dealership from its original site at 63 E. Allen Road, with its current high

visibility alongside the eastbound lanes of Interstate 82.

Moore described the new construction

as being “state of the art” and including the millennium branding for an FCA

facility. It will be 20,000 square feet and is targeted for completion this

fall at 501 Stover Road in Grandview.

A sale of land in Pasco as a potential

new site for Speck Hyundai has not been finalized. The Moores have considered

relocating their dealership to 6.7 acres near Sandifur Parkway and Midland

Lane, between McCurley Integrity Subaru and Camping World, on land currently

owned by the city of Pasco.

Originally expected to close before

the end of 2018, Pasco’s Deputy City Manager Stan Strebel said, “at the buyer’s

request, the closing date was extended to be on or before Feb. 28, 2019.”

Moore said, “We are still doing our

due diligence. No one has signed on the dotted line.”

Moore said there are still items up in

the air before the $1.5 million purchase may be completed. When the potential

land sale was made public, the Moores talked about the possibility of also

adding the luxury Hyundai Genesis line to their offerings. If the property sale

is finalized, it would benefit Pasco’s economic development program.