Developer buys Altamonte Springs site for 7th local store of auto body repair chain

Dallas-based Cross Development paid $790,000 on April 6 for a build-to-suit site in Altamonte Springs, planned as the seventh local store of auto body repair chain Caliber Collision.

Located at the intersection of Rainer Drive and Pearl Lake Causeway with frontage on Bunnell Road, the 2.21-acre site lies less than a mile southwest of the Altamonte Crossings and West Town Corners shopping centers.

It was the last lot of the nine-lot Lorraine Commerce Park, and the final lot sold by Regency Land & Development, Ltd., an affiliate of the Cousineau family, whose patriarch Oscar "Cuz" Cousineau started Air Flow Designs air conditioning repair business locally in 1958.

Cousineau developed the commerce park in the 1980s, and sold half the lots before passing away. The final lot had been marketed for the past nine years by Trevor Hall, Jr., managing director of Land Services for Colliers International in Orlando.

Cross has had a site plan approved by the city, and has construction plans now under review. A groundbreaking is expected within the next two months, and a projected opening of the store by December.

Auto body repair centers are projected to continue to be a growing industry in the coming years, with the prospect of autonomous vehicles entering the market likely coming only in 2025 or later.

The Department of Labor estimated in early 2016 that the total number of "automotive body and related repair" technicians in the U.S. will grow 9.2 percent over the next decade, from 149,700 in 2014 to 163,500 by 2024, according to an April 2016 report by trade publication Parts & People.

There are currently six Caliber Collision body shops across Greater Orlando.

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