Post & Mail photo/TJ Hemlinger
A hole where the Trier’s body shop used to sit is being filled in by dirt from the interceptor sewer project to make way for a future, undetermined project.

By TJ HEMLINGER
Staff writer

    Rising from the ashes of a fire that destroyed a building on the site in the summer of 2004 might be a new Chrysler showroom for Trier Ford Chrysler, a Columbia City institution since 1935.
    Trier, which also sells Lincolns, Mercurys, Dodges and Jeeps at 502 S. Main St., is contemplating a new facility that may bring in a few more jobs.
    The remnants of the old body shop and Chrysler showroom have been razed, and now the company is filling in the hole.
    “Rick Creech and us have been talking, and we couldn’t build on the old, existing base,” Grant Trier said. “So we hired someone to tear it out. The city is putting a new sewer line through town, and we’re using the dirt to fill the hole.”
    Trier said nothing is certain and that the company has solicited no prices or prospective architectural plans.
    The company may petition the city council for a tax abatement, but even that isn’t certain yet. It had a tax abatement when it built its Ford showroom.
    “We’ll gain two to three times more area,” Trier said. “When we see the (hole filled), we’ll sit down and make a decision.”
    Trier has been in business in Columbia City since 1935. The family opened its Chrysler showroom in 1947.
    Tom Tenney erected the building that was destroyed in the late 1940s at what was then the south edge of Columbia City.
    “We wanted obviously to stay in the community,” Trier said.
    Now the family may be anchored more securely.