Harley-Davidson store to move, change name

A banquet hall is one of the features of the new Harley dealership.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
AUSTINTOWN -- Selling more motorcycles is just the start for the new Harley-Davidson store being built along Interstate 80.
At a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday, store officials announced these upgrades as they plan to move out of their 9-year-old store in Canfield Township:
An expanded retail area is expected to boost sales of Harley-branded clothes by at least 40 percent.
A 200-seat banquet hall will be attached to the new store. It will be operated by Quaker Steak & amp; Lube and available for weddings, parties and meetings.
A training course will be built on the asphalt to instruct new drivers. Among the instructors will be police officers, sheriff's deputies and Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains.
A combined parts and labor department was implemented this year and will be carried over to the new store. Store officials said other Harley dealers are reviewing the combination, which prevents people from having to wait in line twice.
The store has enough space at its acre site to hold a bike night each Thursday in connection with the adjacent Quaker Steak restaurant. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people are expected each week.
"We wanted to build a destination store," said Tom Wronkovich, president and chief executive of Harley-Davidson/Buell of Youngstown.
Store getting new name
The change is so big that the store will be changing its name to Harley-Davidson Bike Town.
Construction of the 47,000-square-foot store on Interstate Boulevard has started and is expected to be completed in September or October.
It is about twice as big as the current store on Boardman-Canfield Road, which will allow the store to receive a larger allotment of motorcycles, said Tim Hamilton, store marketing manager.
The store now is selling about 600 new motorcycles a year, but that will increase by between 150 and 250 a year, he said.
A lot has changed for the store in the past 10 years.
Until it moved to Canfield in 1998, the store operated from a small storefront on Mahoning Avenue in Youngstown and sold about 90 motorcycles a year.
Wronkovich joined the ownership group that year. The Canfield resident previously owned Midwest Motorsports in Akron.
The other owners are two Canton-area residents. Glenn Mears Jr. owns six car dealerships in the Akron area that operate under the Park name. Dan Harding owns Harding's Park Cycle near Canton. Mears and Harding also own Harley dealerships in Wheeling, W.Va., and Belmont, Ohio.
Creation of the Austintown store goes back two years to an idea developed by George Warren and Gary Meszaros, owners of Sharon, Pa.-based Quaker Steak. They proposed holding a bike night at the Canfield motorcycle store.
Wronkovich thought it was a great idea, but there wasn't enough room. Soon, both he and the Quaker Steak owners were talking about teaming up with side-by-side stores in Austintown. The Quaker Steak restaurant opened last year.
Warren said the store is doing well, but he's excited by extra traffic he expects to be generated from the Harley customers.
shilling@vindy.com