Ernie Passeos said he initially planned to relocate and expand his longtime Liberty Harley-Davidson business in Akron, not sell it.
Iconic American motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson, for one, urged the dealership to move out of its East Cuyahoga Falls Avenue site in Akron’s North Hill neighborhood. The company wanted someplace newer, larger and easily accessible off a highway in the Greater Akron area. Passeos started looking for a new site after closing his Boston Heights location last March.
He and his former wife, Rosemary, business partners in Liberty, rethought things and made a difficult decision to sell the dealership they had been running together for 26 years.
“I just decided not to build,” said Passeos, now 73. “I wouldn’t sell it to somebody who wouldn’t move it forward. I wanted somebody who would take care of my people. I know I made the right decision.”
Enter Mike Davis, a 47-year-old former airline executive who, with his wife Franscene, bought Liberty Harley-Davidson and renamed it Rubber City Harley-Davidson. They expect to relocate off state Route 8 in Cuyahoga Falls this year.
Davis and Passeos began discussing a deal back in October, with the closing taking place Feb. 6. They didn’t disclose terms. (Separate from the cost of a negotiated sale of a dealership, Harley-Davidson says it requires dealer candidates to have a minimum net worth of $2 million, including at least $1 million in “liquid assets.”)
Davis was one of three suitors for Liberty Harley, Passeos said.
“The discussion came up. It looked like a good opportunity for us,” Davis said. “By Harley- Davidson standards, it went pretty quick.”
Rubber City Harley is his third Harley-Davidson dealership in Ohio. Davis in 2003 bought and opened Adventure Harley-Davidson in Dover and in 2010 bought and reopened Mad River Harley-Davidson, which had sat closed for about a year in Sandusky.
Before he got into motorcycles in a big way, West Virginia native Davis was into jets. He started in the airline industry at age 18, working his way through college as a night shift bag handler and by age 26 was the USAir manager at the airline’s Boston hub. He also went to work for small regional jet carriers affiliated with Delta and then United Express.
Along the way, he got married. He and his wife have three daughters, now ages 19, 17 and 14.
Davis said he hadn’t ridden a motorcycle in years until 2000, when with his wife’s encouragement, he bought a black Harley-Davidson Softail Deuce.
“Three years later, I was an owner, a dealer,” Davis said. His main ride now is a black Street Glide. “Everything I have is black,” he said.
The decision to make a career change from manager to owner came in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Davis said. He and his family were living in northern Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.
“My kids had indoor recess for a year” after the terrorist attacks and other events, Davis said. “We were ready to go do something different.”
He and his wife explored options and looked at places that would allow them to live within driving range of family and friends. They drew a triangle from Cleveland to Pittsburgh to West Virginia and defined that as the broad area where they could move, Davis said.
And then the former H&M Harley-Davidson dealership in Dover went up for sale, Davis said.
He admits that while he knew where Canton was, he couldn’t place Dover on a map at the time. But one thing led to another and the Davises bought the dealership in 2003, renamed it Adventure Harley-Davidson and relocated it. The family moved to nearby New Philadelphia.
“I went from having 5,000 people in my department to 20 people. It was a big adjustment,” Davis said. “We love the lifestyle, we love the product.”
In talking with Harley-Davidson about becoming a dealer, Davis said, he presented a business plan showing he wanted to create a dealership that combined the quality and service of upscale department store Nordstrom with the attitude and edge of Harley- Davidson.
Adventure Harley-Davidson has been rated among the top dealerships in the nation by Harley-Davidson, Davis said.
It has ranked as high as sixth in Harley’s Bar & Shield program, which measures such things as sales growth, service quality and customer satisfaction evaluations of its more than 600 U.S. dealerships, he said. Adventure Harley- Davidson has been among just 25 dealerships that qualify for the top annual Bar & Shield recognition, he said.
He saw another opportunity in buying the closed Harley-Davidson dealership in Sandusky. He renamed the dealership Mad River.
“We opened in May 2010,” Davis said. “It had been closed almost a year. We worked out the deal and opened it in record time. 2010 was a challenging year. That store has come back and done well.”
And now he has Rubber City Harley-Davidson.
Davis just purchased the former Circuit City building off Howe Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls, a site that Passeos also had looked into. Davis said one of the main attractions is the property’s large parking lot — there’s enough room to hold outdoor weekend events for customers.
Davis expects he’ll need to spend nearly $1 million to renovate the 40,000-square-foot facility. Plans call for a 15,000-square-foot showroom, with space for 120 motorcycles on the floor, a large service area and a training facility for employees of all three dealerships.
“We want to be a destination,” he said. “I think this has the potential to be a phenomenal market for Harley- Davidson.”
Davis said having a training center is important because he’s a big proponent of employee training. The training helps them with customers and also to develop in other ways, such as leadership.
“It’s about teaching our people about being better in what they do,” he said. “Fun is one of our core values.”
Davis said he’s also intent on building the Rubber City dealership, based on what he said is a “great foundation” set by Liberty Harley.
“We want to take care of the customers [Ernie and Rosemary Passeos] built,” he said. “We want to be known for our level of customer service and professionalism.”
The design of the new store is still being worked out, he said.
Adventure Harley-Davidson was designed to provide a comfortable, lodgelike atmosphere, while Mad River deliberately resembles the original Harley-Davidson factory.
The look of the new Rubber City Harley might have an industrial theme to it, Davis said.
“We’ll try to tie in elements of the local community,” Davis said. “I think the dealership has to have its own look. We have a few ideas from the designer.”
In the meantime, Davis is renting the former Liberty Harley-Davidson building from Passeos. Most of Liberty Harley’s employees will be staying on with Rubber City, Davis said.
Passeos said he still owns the East Cuyahoga Avenue building as well as the property in Boston Heights, where he just started a used-car venture, Carriage Traders, that will specialize in mid- to high-end vehicles — and probably some motorcycles, he said.
Once Rubber City Harley is in its new location, the former Liberty Harley building might become a church facility, Passeos said.
He acknowledges mixed feelings about the sale.
“This company 26 years later has defined me. And I it,” Passeos said. “It was a challenge to suck that up and go forward with it [the sale].”
While he’s not ready to retire and is looking forward to his new car business, the time was right to sell Liberty Harley-Davidson to the right person, he said.
“I was a dinosaur to the business,” Passeos said. “You need this new breed of dealer to move the market forward, if you will.”
Jim Mackinnon can be reached at 330-996-3544 or jmackinnon@thebeaconjournal.com.
