Southeastern corner of St. Joseph continues to expand
By Leah Rainwater
Reed Chevrolet held its official opening ceremony on Monday morning, and the rain didn’t stop the community from celebrating the growth happening in St. Joseph.
“If you haven’t had a chance to come out to the new Reed Chevrolet, it’s absolutely beautiful,” said Natalie Hawn, president and CEO of the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce. “It’s right next to Menards. What a great addition to St. Joseph.”
Over the past few years, St. Joseph has seen growth in its southeastern region.
The main cause of that has been the opening of Menards along Commonwealth Court.
One of the owners of Reed Chevrolet said there’s more than one reason why they chose the south side of St. Joseph to move the new location to.
“We actually commissioned a traffic study to kind of figure out if we should go on the north side of St. Joseph or on the south side, and what we found was substantial,” said Tyler Reed. “The traffic on the south side of St. Joseph is dramatically higher than on the north side.”
Along with positioning their dealerships together, Reed said Menards was also a big factor in their move as well.
“What we wanted to do from the very beginning is position both of our dealerships close to each other where the traffic was the highest, and we found that Menards is the single largest driver of traffic in St. Joseph,” Reed said.
Hawn said it’s wonderful that Reed Automotive Group is contributing to the growth of St. Joseph.
“Compared to 10 years ago, it’s certainly grown, I think, for this region. Menards has been a big part of the growth factor,” Hawn said. “But I think there are all parts of St. Joseph that are growing and expanding. But we love to see the growth here as people come into our city from Kansas City.”
Reed said he has high hopes for the opening of the new facility and that it provides a great opportunity for St. Joseph.
“We feel like it’s very impactful in the community. Thankfully in the city of St. Joseph, we’ve been able to expand, which means we get to hire more folks locally and we’re thrilled about that opportunity,” Reed said. “We think it’s a win-win for St. Joseph, for Northwest Missouri and for Reed Automotive Group.”
Reed said the move has been nothing short of fantastic. Not only was the company looking to expand in the community, but it’s looking to expand with employees as well.
“Just because we’ve been able to move into such a larger building, we’ve had a huge influx in customers and what we’d like to announce to everybody is that we’re hiring in all positions and we’d love it if folks were able to come by and apply and help join this winning team.”
