November 11, 2008 – 9:03 am
The Sugar Land location of bankrupted Bill Heard Chevrolet has a new owner. And the new place is gonna be . . . a car dealership! “[Jean] Durdin, who owns Parkway Chevrolet in northwest metro Houston, outbid fellow Houston dealer Mac Haik for the Heard store in southwest Houston. Durdin added more than $7.7 million to Haik’s original bid to buy the store for $20 million, not including vehicle and parts inventory. Durdin also outbid two other competitors, but [turnaround consultant Fred] Caruso declined to name them.” [Automotive News, via Swamplot inbox; previously]
Read more about: 77037, Bankruptcies, Buying and Selling, Retail, Sugar-Land
October 2, 2008 – 12:30 pm
On the lot at the shuttered Bill Heard Chevrolet off the Southwest Freeway in Sugar Land Saturday: a couple of armed security guards, hired by GM to make sure nothing leaves the lot.
Inside the dealership’s main offices it looks as though the entire showroom floor was frozen in time. Deflated balloons hang off of cubicle corners and showroom models. A loan application sits on a desk, unfinished. A framed picture of a family going down a roller coaster at Sea World hangs above an uncleared desk, one of many family photos that indicate the suddenness of the announcement.
If you’re to believe one of the managers of this particular dealership, the employees stayed late into the night helping customers get their plates processed and out the door. Contradicting this is an article from Wednesday in the Houston Chronicle in which the operations manager of Bill Heard Sugar Land, Linda Patterson, claimed they were selling vehicles into the night and would continue to stay in business. But by the next morning it was announced they would be closing, possibly for good.
After the jump: More on Bill Heard’s collapse, plus photos from Jalopnik’s (how’d they get?) behind-the-scenes report!
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Read more about: 77037, Fraud, Openings and Closings, Retail, Sugar-Land
September 25, 2008 – 6:49 pm
Car-shark favorites Landmark Chevrolet — on I-45 North near Gulf Bank — and Bill Heard Chevrolet — on the Southwest Freeway at 90 in Sugar Land — are both closing as part of a nationwide 13-dealership shutdown orchestrated by the pair’s parent company, Bill Heard Enterprises, which is based in Georgia. The move should make a lot of former customers very happy.
Available soon: A few more of those 9.9-acre stormwater-special feeder-road concrete lots?
Photo: Bill Heard Chevrolet
Read more about: 77037, Openings and Closings, Retail, Sugar-Land, W. Mount Houston
Fox TV reporter Isiah Carey breathlessly describes the scene yesterday at Airline Dr. and Hill Rd. — “probably one of the most dangerous areas in our city” — where he had stopped to plug a leaky tire:
In the 15 minutes I was there I witnessed 2 hit and run accidents. One truck hit a car and then drove off. The other was a car slamming into a SUV and the driver of the car also took off. In both cases the victims pursued the drivers who hit them. Then there was almost a third accident but the drivers managed to avoid hitting each other. But the fun didn’t end there. There was another instance where two people were driving down Airline and arguing from car to car. One passenger was hanging out of the window yelling at the other driver while pointing his finger very angrily. I asked the tire repair guy what was going on. He immediately blamed the flea markets just down the road. I still don’t get how the flea market can affect how adults behave on a Sunday afternoon. Anyway, when I left the tire repair shop there was like bumper to bumper traffic in front of those flea markets along Airline. I have never seen so many people out and about without a major concert. I almost hit a couple of them who just walked in front of my moving car to get from one side of the flea market to the other.
Read more about: 77037, Airline, Flea Markets, Hazards, Retail, Shopping Centers, Streets
