Construction underway on the new Midbay Motors dealership at Richards Bays developing motor city corridor, adjacent to Richards Bay Civic Centre and Zululand University Richards Bay campus.

The uMhlathuze municipality’s planned motor city corridor in Richards Bay’s central business district has received a boost with Midbay Motors planning to invest R40 million into a major motor dealership.

Midbay Motors has purchased the first two portions of the motor city corridor site on prime land adjacent to the Richards Bay Civic Centre.

Dealer principal Kenneth Hodgson said R40m would be invested in the development over the next few years, which would be home to the first dealership in the country to carry Volkswagen SA’s new corporate identity.

“We have seen the growth of Richards Bay over the past few years and have identified the need for such a dealership. The development of the new shopping centre and the new road infrastructure has been an important factor in our timing of this development,” he said.

“They say that location is everything in business and we believe that we can’t go wrong with our strategic location next to the University of Zululand and in close proximity to the shopping centre. We hope that our development will encourage other vehicle manufacturers to follow suit so that we can create a ‘shopping centre’ for cars where customers can walk from one dealership to the next to compare products and prices,” added Hodgson.

He said that the development was being done in three phases and would be fully complete by mid-2013. The building was designed for future expansion upwards. The idea of a “motor city” for Richards Bay came from the success of the concept initiated at Gateway near Umhlanga in 2004 by Toyota, for whom Hodgson was working at the time.

“Toyota loved the idea. Soon everyone followed suit and today it is very successful. When a person wants to buy a vehicle, they don’t want to drive from one site to another, they want to be able to shop in one street and compare all brands,” said Hodgson.

“I believe that with Midbay VW already acquiring the site and moving forward with development, the rest have no choice but to follow suit… Once they do, Richards Bay will become the motor hub of Zululand,” he said.

Besides developing the dealership in the future motor-city corridor, Hodgson said that Midbay would also be investing R9m at its existing premises to create the first rural Audi centre in the country.