By CJ Dablo
Staff Writer
It’s a gift to the city of Signal Hill when a new business moves in, and this one is just in time for Christmas. On Friday, Dec. 17, Hooman Automotive reopened a Nissan dealership and service center that had shut down earlier this spring and stood vacant for months on three-and-a-half acres of property.
Now known as Hooman Nissan, the auto center on 1800 E. Spring St. has opened its doors with a new owner. It has even welcomed back many of the employees who lost their jobs in May.
The dealership’s employees will now work at a 42,000-square-foot building that presently boasts an inventory of about 300 new vehicles and about 120 used vehicles.
Even though the week before the holidays may seem like an unlikely time to open a business, December is a crucial month for car sales, according to the new dealership’s president and co-owner, Hooman Nissani.
“The last few weeks of December are usually some of the strongest weeks of the car industry,” Nissani said. “We usually see about 30 percent of our sales in the last few weeks for the month of December.”
The Nissan dealership’s previous owner, Terry Schaier, laid off employees and shut down the facility last May. When the Signal Tribune reported on the facility closure, Schaier alluded to significant financial trouble at the time.
Nissani and his partner, Rayan, who is also his younger brother, did try to buy the dealership before the doors to the auto center were locked, but according to Nissani, they did not complete the deal and did not assume control of the center until last September.
And while he acknowledges that 2008 and 2009 were economically hard years, he maintains a positive outlook for the future of auto sales. “We believe that, going forward, we should see steady growth over the next few years,” Nissani said.
Signal Hill will now benefit from sales-tax revenue collected from the new business. “Each of these dealerships is really critical,” said City Manager Ken Farfsing, noting that 70 percent of the city’s annual budget comes from the sales taxes collected from businesses. According to Farfsing, the auto dealerships in Signal Hill contribute about 25 percent of that revenue.
When the dealership closed last spring, the city felt the impact of losing another business in a tough economy.
“Nissan was really struggling,” Farfsing said, explaining that the City had tried to help the previous owner by providing financial assistance to him before he went out of business. “There’s always spin-off effects when a large business closes. The impacts widely affect the community.”
With the new dealership open, the president and co-owner can concentrate on sales. Nissani said that his annual sales projections will begin around $30 million, but he is aiming to eventually make $60 million a year with the Nissan dealership alone.
The city has been instrumental in helping Hooman Nissan with their start.
“We want to make sure that the dealership can be successful,” Farfsing said. The city manager confirmed that the City is now helping the dealership owners with their future plans for the site. Nissani wants to expand the facilities to accommodate a larger service and collision center.
Nissani said he is grateful to the city staff and the Signal Hill Redevelopment Agency for their help. “I think that they really have always been very cooperative and are really pro-business, which is great to see when you come into a city and you get that kind of support from them,” Nissani said.
According to Nissani, the auto center has already contacted employees who used to work for the previous owner to see if they want to come back. He added that he’s already hired about 80 people to operate the auto center. He estimates that about 30 percent of his staff had worked for Schaier’s Nissan.
By the time they are fully operational the company should grow to about 120 people, Nissani said. They’ve already hired back three veteran mechanics.
It’s just a coincidence that the 32-year-old Culver City resident’s last name sounds close to the Japanese automaker, Nissan. Nissani has been in the business of selling foreign and domestic cars by different automakers for a long time. He started as a sales associate and learned the industry well enough to buy a GM dealership at the age of 23, Nissani said. He’s owned Hooman Toyota of Long Beach on Pacific Coast Highway since 2008.
Nissani predicted that three new Nissan vehicles will generate some attention on his lot: the GT-R, a luxury sports car; the Quest, the automaker’s newly updated minivan; and especially the Leaf, Nissan’s electric vehicle.
Nissan already has a year-long waiting list nationwide to buy the Leaf, according to Nissani. He noted there were area customers who already asked to be on that waiting list.
The Leaf will be available for a test drive sometime in January, Nissani confirmed. He predicted that the electric vehicle will be popular here.
“The electrical [vehicle] is a whole different technology, and it’s really a game changer for the auto industry because now you’re really using no gas, which is really amazing,” Nissani said, predicting that the environmental impact will be huge.
An official grand-opening celebration of the new dealership will take place next year.
