Just up Roswell Road from the City of Sandy Springs' planned walkable city center initiative, an abandoned car dealership has been a prominent neighborhood eyesore for years — along the city's main thoroughfare, no less. With more than 1,000 feet of frontage along Roswell Road, the 11-acre site has festered since Tom Jumper Chevrolet filed for bankruptcy back in 2008. But according to an email from City Councilmember Ken Dishman, RBM of Atlanta — one of the largest Mercedes-Benz dealerships in the country — will be taking over the lot as a satellite location, in an effort to free up their existing dealership less than a mile up the road. It could be metro Atlanta's latest example of a deceased car lot being reborn.
Dishman heralds the news as a welcome change and "true progress that we can all take pride in." Admittedly, for some, it's likely a car dealership isn't the best outcome for a site located in a largely residential area near North Springs Charter High School. Sandy Springs had considered the site for its new police headquarters back in 2012, according to Reporter Newspapers. But for the better part of a decade, the large parking lot and vacant building have been a seriously blighted element along the corridor and, on the bright side, Mercedes will likely put some money into fixing up the site.
In part, Dishman's email states: "RBM's initial plans are to clean up the entire parking area in order to accommodate some of their burgeoning inventory. Then they will set about renovating the interior of the building. Although RBM has not finalized their plans on how best to utilize the site, they are contemplating moving Pre-Owned Sales and Sprinter Sales there, among other possibilities."
The expansion of the Mercedes-Benz dealership, coming on the heels of the announcement that the company's North American headquarters is relocating to the city, marks a bona fide German invasion of Sandy Springs (but in a good way), with the three locations all located relatively close to each other.
· The Pulse Newsletter - City of Sandy Springs June 5 Edition
· PRIME NORTH ATLANTA COMMERCIAL SITE [Transwestern]