A Bridgeport auto dealer has purchased the former Healey Ford dealership in Ansonia for $1.5 million, according to a press release from a commercial real estate broker.
Alan Fischer, of Fischer Real Estate in Orange, announced the transaction Tuesday (March 29).
The buyer is Ron Saracino, the president of Bridgeport-based Road Ready Used Cars.
The former Healey Ford dealership is at the corner of Main Street and Healey Drive in Ansonia.
It has sat vacant for more than five years since the dealership folded in 2010.
The property purchased by Saracino consists of two, two-acre corner parcels, including a 25,380-square-foot showroom, a 3,627-square-foot auto body shop and a 1,859-square foot gas station.
Fischer’s press release said Road Ready will relocate to the site once renovations are completed.
Saracino bought the property from the Ford Motor Credit Company.
Fischer represented both Ford and Saracino in the deal.
The realtor singled out Sheila O’Malley, the city’s economic development director, and Rick Dunne, executive director of the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments, “for their tireless efforts to fill some big gaps and then help hold together a complicated transaction that had many moving parts.”
“Without Sheila and Rick, this deal doesn’t close,” Fischer said in the press release.
O’Malley said the negotiations surrounding the deal were “nail-biting” at times.
“There was a lot of back-and-forth between the (Ford) corporate office and the city,” she said.
She said Dunne stepped in to help with $400,000 for environmental assessment and cleanup from a federal Environmental Protection Agency revolving loan fund that is administered through NVCOG.
Dunne also said the deal took some time to put together, but said he was happy to see the prominent property returning to productive reuse.
“It was a long road,” he said.
Cassetti said he anticipates Saracino finishing his renovations by sometime this summer, after which the city will hold a ribbon-cutting there.
“I’m excited,” the mayor said. “I’ve been talking to Ron Saracino for the last year about it.”
