I remember the day so well. I was running my dad’s body shop on the west side of town and on the way home decided to stop in and visit the local body shop right up the street from my house. It had a red, white and blue neon sign lighting up the street below in a retro, almost disco-like font > “Center City Collision.” I just walked in one day on a lark, completely unannounced.

“How’s it going? I’m Kevin and I was just stopping in to say Hi to a fellow shop owner. I work on the other side of town but live here in Norwood and just wanted to meet another shop owner.”

“Nice to meet you Kevin. You want another one?” as the owner, Larry, reaches into his pocket and pulls out the keys to his shop. Half jokingly.

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I’ve been at it almost 40 years and I’m ready to get out. Would you like to own another one?”

…and thus began a journey that led me to buy Center City Collision a few months later.

I owe a lot to Larry. He developed a really strong local business and had great relationships in the community with residents and also with Northland VW, a neighboring dealership who ended up being a major source for referrals for us since they do not have a body shop in house.

And I have loved being a part of the neighborhood living and working just a few blocks apart. It is an old school concept of a “mom & pop” store embedded in a neighborhood. That sense of being part of a neighborhood is often lost in our highly mobile, internet driven world. And that is probably a large part of Center City Collision’s charm is the scale. We’re big enough to have good relationships with insurance companies and dealerships along with the most modern equipment and computerized technology… but we’re small enough to be known by our neighbors and have a real stake in the life of the neighborhoods around us including Norwood, Oakley and Hyde Park.

So, I can truly say that life is good in the neighborhood…