For a town that just past 100k people back in December, I wasn't expecting to see my home town on a site like this. We also have another building in town thats almost done being build that I was told was suppose to be one of the most enviromentaly friendly office building in the country.

Also a couple of our elementary schools have windmills and gray water systems. Also Walmart built a super-walmart test center here that has three windmills, solar panels and pretty much every other gadget you could think of.

Ok...so maybe when I think of about it, maybe this dealership is merely falling right in line with everything else.

53 000 sq ft ? Now that's what I call green..........

Hey, a large number of Toyota's are still more fuel effecient than some of the hybrids out there. As long as Toyota can keep getting those 30+ mpg numbers we should keep encourage them and hope their tech will bleed over into their

Here in Cincinnati, one Toyota dealership recently purchased an abandoned "big box" building (a grocery store that had moved to a new location down the street) and remodeled it into their new showroom. That is a first for this area of the country, where old big box stores end up sitting abandoned, rotting, getting covered in growing weeds. Of course, I’m not sure what the Toyota dealership is planning on doing with their old building…

Per the previous question, There is no "old" dealership, and this is a new "point" (which means it's a new location, and hence no old store).

The facility has officially been awarded the LEED Silver rating, and is now officially the first auto dealership in the world to have achieved any LEED rating, much less SILVER.

This owner made a serious commitment and put all his own $$$ on the line - rather than tell him it should be smaller, we should applaud the vision. It could have easily been 20,000 sf larger.

Now, on with the rest of the show…

Reusing defunct big box (or other buildings) for car dealeships is hardly new. We're seeing it across the country. There were multiple defunct home improvment stores across the mid-west that were purchsed by car dealers and converted. Not to mention the MULTIPLE empty Walmarts that were abandoned the second that the local tax incentives were over... NOW that's green for Walmart...

It's not a major move to see that a big empty box with loads of parking and good highway frontage make for a decent car dealership.... We're doing one now in a former Sears Expo store...

Re-use is never a bad thing, but in and of itself it's not green... just common sense.

Heh, I was searching for the phone number for the place where I bought my new Camry hybrid, and this page was #2 on Google. Pat Lobb has more hybrids than any other dealer I've been to. And the flushless urinals are a nice touch--heck, everything about the bathrooms seemed green. I highly recommend this place. Nice folks, too.

I still can't find anywhere in McKinney which will take the mountains of polystyrene we have to toss after every purchase.

Jeremy,
Here's as close as I could find. McKinney is working on some major GREEN initiatives, maybe this should be one of them. Great City- Expect them to contimue to lead the way...

Foam Fabricators, Inc., Dallas 972-241-0096
Metro Foam Recycling Inc., Dallas 214-231-3626