UPDATE
Kelleher later clarified his position in a direct message on April 2. The dealership itself will remain at its current location on Route 202 in Chadds Ford Township, he said, while the expansion into Concord will be for more service bays, a detail center, and training.
END UPDATE
On the day the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce named David Auto as Small Business of the Year, owner Dave Kelleher said he’s moving the dealership out of Chadds Ford Township. Kelleher’s announcement came at the end of his acceptance speech.
Kelleher went to the Chadds Ford Planning Commission two years ago with a sketch plan for the proposed expansion, but he told the chamber crowd that those plans fizzled.
“Chadds Ford had no appetite for it whatsoever and they made it clear to us. So, I was disappointed. I didn’t want to fight the township so, we went looking. And I’m glad to announce today that we found a piece of property along Route 322 in Concord Township, and Concord has been nothing but excited to have us come. We’re going to build a new facility with 20 new service bays and a training center that is absolutely state of the art,” he said.
Kelleher added that he anticipates hiring an additional 50-70 people on top of the already 96 employees already working at the Chadds Ford location. He said many of those new hires will be veterans, ex-cons, and people being helped by one of his regular charities, City Team Ministry of Chester.
While he didn’t go into more detail during the luncheon, he said in a series of messages later in the afternoon that he was contacted by “a representative of Chadds Ford” who told him that township supervisors would “vehemently oppose any attempt to put one more brick on our property.”
“The plan was without variance, so we certainly could’ve challenged, but I had no appetite for a long and drawn-out legal battle with my own township. Evidently, they don’t like the amount of traffic on that stretch of 202 and my business is ‘too’ busy now. They didn’t want to see us get more successful,” Kelleher said.
He added that he plans to begin Concord’s land development phase of the application in September and possibly break ground for the new facility during the second quarter of 2024.
Kelleher’s charitable efforts have long been known. Chadds Ford Live has done several stories over the years on his coat drives and Adopt-a-Child program in which people “adopt” a needy child and buy that boy or girl a Christmas present, which in turn is given to the parents to give to the child. And those efforts were cited in his getting the DelCo Chamber award.
Over the years, Kelleher’s foundation has given out more than $200,000 to Delaware County charities. In 2022 alone, his foundation bought 1,500 new coats for kids, provided Thanksgiving meals for 400 families, and “adopted” 1,000 youngsters for those Christmas gifts. And that was just last year alone. Over the years, the foundation gave more than 7,400 coats, and Thanksgiving meals to 1,200 families, and provided Christmas gifts to 3,000 youngsters.
Kelleher spent every dime he and his wife had and borrowed a lot more to buy the former Raymond Dodge dealership in 2005, and he has become successful. He attributes that success to building a culture for his dealership, learning how to market his business, how to adapt, and serving the community through his charitable giving. With that, he offered some advice to the business owners in the audience. e
“Take your money, take your profits, and invest it back into the community,” he said. “Figure out the portion you can give to the community, then do it yourself. Be involved because it affects you and it affects the community…Word gets around and your business will thrive. Ever since the first dollar I gave away, my business got better and better, and better.”
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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