NORTHAMPTON — After two years of efforts, The TommyCar Auto Group’s plans to build a Volvo dealership near downtown Northampton have sputtered out.
President Carla Cosenzi announced Sunday that the company would be closing down its Volvo Cars Pioneer Valley location, currently located at 48 Damon Road. The location had been only temporary, with plans to relocate to a large lot on King Street closer to downtown, plans which Cosenzi said are no longer feasible.
“Our goal was to invest in the city, the community and jobs,” Cosenzi said in an interview with the Gazette. “Unfortunately, the support from the city and its citizens wasn’t there for that.”
Cosenzi purchased the 5.35-acre lot on King Street for $5.25 million in 2023, ending its 18-year vacancy following the closure of a previous Honda dealership on the property. Contaminated soil at the lot hindered its reuse for many years until a cleanup was performed on the site in 2015.
But plans to remake the lot into a new dealership became complicated following a citizen’s petition in 2024 to ban auto dealerships within the city’s Central Business Gateway zoning district, where the lot is located. The petition came as a direct response to Cosenzi’s plans for a dealership, with petitioners telling the Planning Board they felt the lot could be better used for housing or local business.
Though the City Council passed the zoning change, they did so stating that as Cosenzi had already purchased the property, she would still be allowed to build her dealership. But Cosenzi said that the changes resulted in additional expenses for TommyCar and that the group was under a time constraint with Volvo to get the dealership ready.
“Volvo, like all other automotive manufacturers, have very strict facility and compliance standards for its retail partners,” Cosenzi said. “We purchased that land and invested in it to meet those standards as well as meet the standards of the city of Northampton and what their design criteria was.”
Cosenzi said that although the property would have been the home of the dealership, the group’s goal was to have three acres of the property partitioned that could have been used for other types of development like housing, to be subsidized by the dealership.
“I feel like I advocated for myself and Volvo really well at the City Council meetings and Planning Board meetings. I sent a letter to the City Council asking for consideration. I feel like I pleaded with the citizens of the community” Cosenzi said. “Everybody was very adamant about a car dealership not going on that piece of property.”
Later in the year, Cosenzi had also used the lot as a location to store more than 300 cars from her other dealerships. But that too resulted in ire from nearby residents and city officials, with local residents complaining about employees using the cars’ panic buttons to find them and the city’s building commissioner sending Cosenzi a cease-and-desist letter. The cars were later moved off-site.
According to Cosenzi, the dealership would have created approximately 40 jobs. The employees working at the temporary facility on Damon Road would be moved to working at the TommyCar-owned Northampton Volkswagen dealership at 361 King St.
“It’s important for people to know that we’re still here for our customers, it’s our same team, our same service and we’re just around the corner for them at Northampton Volkswagen,” Cosenzi said. “We really appreciate the customers who were loyal to us in the community for supporting us for all these years and for them to know that our commitment is still there for them.”
As for the vacant lot, it remains under Cosenzi’s ownership, and she said there were no current plans for the property.
“I guess our hope is that it won’t sit vacant as long as it did before I purchased it,” she said.
Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.