Look for more new-build body shops as markets and companies mature and owners seek ideal layouts in locations they love.
Bigger players are already invested in brownfield or greenfield development, so-called based on whether land had a prior use.
A push now comes from indie shops and smaller MSOs stepping up to join larger players continuing to work.
Cole Strandberg, Focus Investment Banking managing director and host of Autobody News’ The Collision Vision podcast, said development fills gaps in mature markets; complements M&A as a “strategic alternative or negotiating tool: you don’t have to sell to us, we’ll build it;” and controls location and design.
“It’s increasing,” Strandberg said. Larger groups are sophisticated in practice and personnel, and can choose to build goodwill instead of buying it.
At the same time, “it’s not easy: zoning, permitting, traffic and demographic studies. The single-biggest challenge is recruiting and labor,” he said. You’re staffing up from scratch,” Strandberg said.
Mr. Dent on Development Move
Logan Martin co-owns Mr. Dent Collision Repair with wife Larissa Martin and parents Brent and Kim Martin. His folks founded it in 1993.
Pictured, left to right, are Averie, Brent, Kim, Riggs, Larissa and Logan Martin. The family owns Mr. Dent.
“Humble beginnings like any small business,” Logan said. “Bootstrapped to one location.”
Mr. Dent has three now, with two new-builds, one which just opened. The growing MSO shows development doesn’t have to be an on-fire trend or sole strategy, but can fit into an overall plan. They’ve done it to stay in strong markets and get the places they wanted.
Its first shop opened in West Plains, MO, at 3,000 square feet, expanding to push 12,000. Brent and Kim sold the site to a vo-tech program, building 22,000 new square feet in 2010.
This “ended up being a blueprint” for their newest site in Ozark, also 22,000 square feet. Like West Plains, this replaces a shop, bought in 2021: also 10,000 square feet, also outgrown.
In 2017, Logan and Larissa bought into the business as the family bought a second shop in Seymour. It started at 5,000 square feet and has since doubled. Logan ran it for a time to learn the business.
Inside Mr. Dent’s newest location.
Shops fit markets -- city and metro population and demographics, how near each other, where’s the highway -- and the company. Logistics were vital -- Mr. Dent has 50 employees across three sites.
“We’re big on flow,” Logan said, “and how we want work to move through a facility.”
The first Ozark store was three buildings, and needed new paint booths. “We ran parts out of two storage facilities in the back,” Logan said.
The new site is one building, drive-thru paint booths, greater highway visibility, on 3 acres.
One industry watcher called it “freakin’ beautiful.”
Indies Go Big, Not Home
Looked at one way, “built-to-suit” is just a fancy term for what techs and painters aching to go out on their own do often. Find an oversized shed, decide to deck it out: that’s a brownfield. A January social media post offered a 1,750-square-foot lot in Scranton for $26,000, including 40 sheets of metal to build the garage.
Of course there’s more to it, but even smaller operations are taking longer looks at true new-build.
Clayton Millsap in Illinois has run The Damage Co. for six years and has begun looking for another location. He’s a half-hour south of Tim Papp, a solo operator who built a brownfield mini-site at a closed Jiffy Lube and now seeks a similar greenfield one.
Millsap’s shop is 3,000 square feet and -- you guessed it -- “absolutely too small … busting at the seams” with no room for full ADAS work. “We’re actively looking to upgrade,” he said.
His dream is about 12,000 square feet, all work in-house, in a clean, organized, new-school collision center. He’s talking with neighboring towns about tax incentives, ease-of-use, available land.
“We’re absolutely going to do something,” Millsap said.
That “clean and organized” sounds like Drew Bryant in Florida, who did a brownfield with a “reverse Martin” -- he bought the vo-tech and turned it into a 34,000-square-foot collision center. He has two sites now.
Sometimes a brownfield doesn’t have to be clean and organized. When Strandberg worked at his family’s body shop industry business, “we turned a bowling alley into a body shop.”
Agile and Upstart MSOs are ‘Under the Radar’ No More
Better Collision Centers in the Carolinas has grown largely by green- and brownfield development, it told Autobody News last summer.
The family-run Eustis Body Shop had six Nebraska sites when Ryan Clark was on Strandberg’s podcast in 2023, and now has eight. Growth from the start has been greenfield and brownfield work; the conversation details this.
“Don’t be afraid of greenfield,” he told Strandberg. “It’s not as scary as you think.”
The Martins in Missouri even learned to like building from scratch. Logan said as the family adds stores it’ll get easier. The newest new-build took two-and-a-half years -- finding and buying land, permitting, drawing.
“I fully expect we can [save] eight to 12 months on a new greenfield. We’re definitely looking to grow,” he added.
The walls going up on Premier Truck Group’s new 85,000-square-foot facility in Dallas, TX.
Texas-based Premier Truck Group fixes commercial trucks at 11 U.S. locations. Its work requires space and heavy equipment.
Director of Collision John Spoto said its Kansas City site, 26,000 square feet, was a brownfield: “We tore down the building and kept the floor.”
The 14,000-square-foot Tulsa, OK, location was a warehouse and machine shop. “It had a central crane, which we refurbished and adapted” to the work,” Spoto said.
Amarillo, TX, a 32,000-square-foot collision center at a Premier dealership, was a greenfield.
Now Premiere Truck Group, a unit of Penske Auto Group, has set a September debut for an 85,000-square-foot center in Dallas, which Spoto said will be the largest commercial truck repair center in the U.S.
In Las Vegas, Brightpoint Auto Body Repair plans a brief brownfield to grow its local Frank’s Auto Body brand, which it bought last year. President Paul Williams said he’ll do these rarely, and never greenfield.
“It’s a brownfield, but it’s a bolt-on,” Williams said.
And this site was too good. It’s been both a mechanical repair shop and a collision center. It’s 16,000 square feet. It’s air-conditioned in Vegas, including on the production floor. It will take just 90 days to renovate and move equipment in.
And crucially from a corporate slant, it grows Brightpoint’s hub-and-spoke strategy in a market where “not many single shops for sale here in areas where we want to be,” Williams added.
Mid-Size MSOs in the Mix
“It makes sense to have a greenfield strategy,” said Brian Nichols. “It will become a bigger part of our story.”
Nichols is chief development officer of Quality Collision Group, his family having sold its Cascade Collision Repair in Utah -- eight units, $45 million in revenue -- to the MSO last year.
Nichols’ position is a relatively new role at QCG, which has about 90 locations in 11 states, and reflects growing ground-up development, with M&A.
Brian Nichols.
“There’s always going to be a mix,” Nichols said. “We’re highlighting this is going to be needed.”
QCG will add four greenfield shops to its Stuart’s Paint & Body brand in Texas -- one in Grapevine will be 25,000 square feet -- and three to Cascade in Utah, for instance.
“We can do several different types of greenfields,” Nichols said of its “accordion” work. “Single-story on an acre and a half, or we can scale that up to 30,000 square feet or even bigger.”
Of course the current focus, by a wide margin, remains M&A. In Utah, QCG bought Cascade, then added three more by acquisition, and the greenfields aren’t up yet.
“Acquisitions are faster, and once we have a stronghold, we can build density with fill-ins and greenfield,” Nichols said.
Dallas-based QCG will add about 50 shops this year, with perhaps seven of those new-builds, Nichols said.
But “the industry is changing,” he said, and several years out, “there’s only so many stores to acquire. Our blend will get closer to half-and-half, and eventually be more green and brown.”
Larger MSOs Also Active
A representative of Caliber Collision by email said the largest U.S. MSO adds 150 to 180 new sites annually, split evenly of late between acquisitions and green- and brownfields, and plans a similar approach this year.
Caliber, with 1,800 shops, was rebuffed in February in a bid to build a 12,670-square-foot collision center in Manchester, CT. Last March, it began a brownfield project in Waterbury, an hour away.
Gerber Collision & Glass last year lost out on a brownfield project in Illinois. One observer said Gerber “does its fair share” of new-builds; an area that could see work is the hurricane-affected south Atlantic coast, where the MSO in October temporarily closed 99 shops. Gerber has some 800 locations.
Crash Champions has opened two new-builds this year alone, in Albuquerque, NM, and Land O’Lakes, FL. In June, it opened in 22,000 square feet near Chicago. This site joined five bought in the prior six months in the market, reflecting M&A primacy plus cagey new-build. Crash Champions has about 650 locations.
MSOs with north of 500 locations already do development. Getting into the low hundreds on unit count -- say Classic Collision with about 300, or Joe Hudson’s Collision Center with about 250 -- and often regional focus, can still unearth acquisitions to their metrics, industry watchers said.
Classic Collision recently promoted Scott Gerling to chief development officer; he began with the company as vice president of mergers and acquisitions.
Caliber responded by email; Joe Hudson's declined a request; 10 MSOs didn’t offer comment.
Real Estate, Leases, How the New-Builds Do
Samuel Griffeth, an Arizona-based associate with Matthews Real Estate Services, advises private landowners building for and working with shop owners and MSOs.
Samuel Griffeth.
“We sell net lease investment properties,” Griffeth said. Seven Matthews agents specialize in collision centers.
The market saw 15 such first- and second-generation properties sold in 2024, and 20 in 2023. A second-gen sale is a new-build that’s sold twice. 2024’s on-market trading total: $143 million.
He notes more new-build interest from Caliber, Crash Champions and even Classic Collision, which is at least occasionally kicking his clients’ tires for body shop sites.
A Matthews markets report sees high-growth for greenfields in Texas, Washington, Central Florida, Coastal Virginia and North Carolina. It said lease rates can be up to 50% higher for new-build over older structures.
Larger MSOs, he said, will pay more rent. Caliber’s taste can run to $350,000 to $400,000 a year.
“They want what they want,” and will ante up 7% of annual sales on a lease, he said.
Caliber’s Waterbury, CT, project, for instance, built by regular partner Calito Development Group, is now offered by Marcus & Millichap at $5.2 million, annual rent of $318,000, for a cap rate of 6.15%. A LoopNet listing of Marcus and Millichap’s circular said lease payments escalate 10% every five years.
Calito bought the property for $1.18 million, estimating all-in project costs at $4.5 million, a media report said.
Griffeth said a Pittsburgh-area Caliber is another new-build for sale, and sent images of another in Largo, FL.
“The market is coming back,” Griffeth said.
Leases, Operations and the Power of New
As greenfield increases, the foundation of leasing will change too. Building owners might see big MSOs leave at the end of a term or consolidate two shops for a new-build. This could create opportunity for smaller operators, even independents, to grow into that now-vacated space -- like move-up home buyers.
Selling, though, will always be the “can of corn” -- baseball lingo for an easy catch.
“Acquisitions are faster,” Strandberg said.
QCG’s Nichols said industry advances will also drive new-builds.
“The age of the dirty backyard body shop is ending,” he said. “Older stores get replaced by greenfield.”
In other words, no ADAS on a pocket lot in Scranton.
New shops are “cleaner, organized -- almost becoming like a sterile environment, an operating room,” Nichols said.
“Buildings will be modernized. Customers want to take their vehicle to a place nice-looking and trusted,” he said. Expensive training and equipment, advanced vehicles, and all that this entails, will come to the fore.
QCG, for instance, is “100% OEM certification, procedure, and parts … highly technical repairs,” he said.
The company breaks the bigger-smaller MSO model on this point. It’s yet to crack 100 units, but greenfield is already big for them.
“Our work is different,” Nichols said. “Our properties have to be designed for it.”
Randi Scholtes contributed to this report.
Paul Hughes