March 10, 2005

Garage to purchase bowling alley

By Lauren Heaton

After seven years of moderate but steady growth for their auto repair business, Todd and Nickie Fritschie are prepared to expand Village Automotive into the former bowling alley next door on Xenia Avenue.

The pins, lanes and tricolor shoes gathering dust in the bowling alley will take their final bow this spring to make way for the new business.

The Fritschies plan to purchase the property from Bob Baldwin, who has owned the bowling alley since 1971. Neither the Fritschies nor Baldwin would disclose the sale price.

While the sale is scheduled to close in two weeks, the Fritschies have applied for a conditional use approval from the Village to make the structural changes necessary to turn the building into a lube and detail service shop.

The Village Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the request at its meeting Monday, March 14. The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the Bryan Community Center, meeting rooms A and B.

Since the Fritschies came to Yellow Springs in 1998, from the Tuffy garage Todd Fritschie managed in Xenia, Village Automotive has grown from a two-person, one-bay garage to a seven-person, eight-bay operation that services 270 cars a month.

Nickie Fritschie manages the business end, while her husband oversees the service shop. They have added service manager Kermit Hunt and technicians Bill Camp, Jason Cox, David Maxwell and Justin Hardman. In November they purchased the original Village Automotive space from Baldwin.

The repair shop draws 90 percent of its clients from Yellow Springs, plus a few customers from Xenia. Recently, the business of fixing broken cars has become so busy that Village Automotive doesn’t have enough space or manpower to get to simple tasks, such as an oil change or a complimentary cleaning, Todd Fritschie said.

The Fritschies plan initially to install three bays and a couple of lifts in the bowling alley, at an estimated cost of $25,000, and should be ready to open mid-April. The shop will occupy a third of the bowling alley, leaving the rest of the building free to lease to another small business, for storage or possibly a lunch counter. The Fritschies said they would eventually like to use the extra space to sell used cars.

The couple also plans to hire six employees to run the new garage, which will be held as a separate business, Todd Fritschie said. “That way if that one flops, it doesn’t drag this one under with it,” he said.

“It’s scary, but on the other hand, if you don’t try you’ll never get anywhere,” Nickie Fritschie said. “We’re excited and nervous. It’s a lot like when we opened this place the first time.”

The challenges the bowling alley has faced over the years should not reflect on Village Automotive’s plans to move in, Baldwin said. He bought the business and the building 35 years ago and ran it as a bowling alley until 1996, when the business closed. Since then, Baldwin said, he has had a tough time renting or selling it.

“Yellow Springs never had enough people in town to have a bowling alley, but I never figured out why I couldn’t sell it,” he said, adding that the building would have made a great banquet center or “one hell of a roller rink.”

But Baldwin said he didn’t have the energy to start a new business and has been after the Fritschies for years to buy the property for their auto business.

“I thought, let Todd run it, he’s an honorable, hard-working mechanic,” Baldwin said. “I’m glad the building is finally going to be put to good use.”

The Fritschies have maintained their home in New Carlisle, where two of their three children attend grade school, partly because of the high cost of living in Yellow Springs, they said. But their expansion shows that they are committed to keeping their business in Yellow Springs “for the long haul,” they said.

After five months of considering expanding and then negotiating the business deal, Todd Fritschie said he doesn’t want to spend any more time mulling over the risks of their decision.

“I just want to get down to the task of doing it,” he said.