South Shore Honda moving to Sunrise

South Shore Honda will have a new showroom on Sunrise Highway in 2016 as the dealership expands, a move that will come with breaks on its Nassau County tax bill after the county’s Industrial Development Agency voted unanimously on April 7 to approve the tax relief.

South Shore Honda, which will change its name to Honda of Valley Stream, is building a new showroom, office and car lot at 164 Sunrise Highway. To help pay for construction materials, the dealership will receive a sales tax exemption of up to $43,000, the IDA announced. The dealership will also receive a 12-year break on property taxes that freezes taxes at current levels for three years, followed by a 2 percent increase for each of the next nine years.

The dealership must expand, according to its attorney, Lisa A. Cairo, because their current facility, located at 704 W. Merrick Rd., does not meet Honda’s standards. If the dealership is not improved to meet the standards, they lose their right to sell Honda vehicles. The Merrick Road facility will no longer be a showroom, Cairo said, and instead will serve solely as a maintenance and repair shop.

Joseph J. Kearney, executive director of the Nassau County IDA, said the agency believed the Honda dealer qualified for the tax relief because of several factors affecting their construction and business practices.

“We recommended that they receive tax breaks for a few reasons,” Kearney said. “They already maintain 31 well-paying jobs at their current dealership location, and they’ve promised to crease 13 new jobs by 2019. They are also going to create 20 short-term construction jobs when they build the new dealership. If the new dealership isn’t built, they could lose their business and those 31 jobs that are already filled, plus the potential new jobs, will go away.”

Also factoring into the IDA’s decision to offer the tax relief, according to Kearney, was the dealership’s location and typical customers. South Shore Honda is near the border between Nassau County and Queens, one of the closest dealerships to the borough. Cairo said that roughly 40 percent of South Shore Honda’s current customers come from west of Nassau County.

Kearney said that because of that high percentage of customers from outside the county, the dealership could utilize a law known as the “tourist destination exception,” which was passed in 2013. The law allows tax breaks for retailers if a large portion of their sales are to customers from outside a certain geographic zone.

“According to some of the independent research that we’ve done, as much as 50 percent of their business comes from outside of their geographic zone,” Kearney said, going on to explain that South Shore Honda’s zone includes the entirety of both Nassau and Suffolk Counties. “That means that people that wouldn’t normally come into the county to do their shopping are coming here, which brings more people into the county to do their shopping, which is a good thing.”

Two other dealerships, Sunrise Volkswagen in Lynbrook and Bical Chevrolet in Valley Stream, have received aid thanks to the same exception. Garden City Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram in Hempstead Village also received tax help from the IDA, due to its location in an economically depressed area