The bright, royal blue exterior of Capital City Collision on Scenic Highway stands like a mirage in a north Baton Rouge neighborhood of boarded-up windows, tattered signage and fading logos once painted vibrantly on businesses that opened years and even decades earlier.
Today, many of them stand abandoned. One year ago, Capital City Collision owner Jason Hughes’ warehouse was one of them.
“I probably could have gone anywhere in Baton Rouge to start my business,” Hughes says in a Business Report feature from the current issue. “I thought it would be a unique idea to open up my business here since I’m from up here.”
Capital City Collision is located in the epicenter of an area in Baton Rouge plagued by persistent vacancies, according to the Greater Baton Rouge Association of Realtors Commercial Investment Division’s annual TRENDS report on industrial properties for 2015. Mathew Laborde of Beau Box Commercial Real Estate specializes in industrial properties. He says the larger warehouses in the area are often considered functionally obsolete.
“The buildings are old,” the agent says, “and typically need a ton of work to get ready for occupancy.”
The prolonged vacancies in the area and the location in general have become a systemic barrier to business entry, often stifling the possibility for economic development. But for Hughes, the potential he saw in the area motivated him as he navigated through the inherent obstacles that often cause business development to stagnate in north Baton Rouge.
“When you enter an area that you know and you can put that effort and that investment into it, it is just better for you in the end because now you are part of the community,” Hughes explains. “You are revitalizing something you know.”
Hughes has developed an innovative business model that seeks to position Capital City Collision as a leader in the Baton Rouge market, while ensuring the company’s viability by proactively addressing the intrinsic challenges of the auto repair industry. His strategy focuses on efficiency and professionalism, which is reflected in both the layout and operation of the 18,000-square-foot warehouse.
“The lobby area: professional,” Hughes points out. “We have policies in place that allow customers to do things or not do things.”
Unlike many body shops, Hughes’ doesn’t allow customers in the areas where work is being done of vehicles. There’s no smoking in front of the shop, and Hughes has committed not to hire family members or people with whom he’s had previous relationships. That way, he can focus strictly on qualified candidates willing to support his vision.
“I’ve also taken technology by storm,” Hughes says. “I would go as far as to say 85% to 90% of body shops are not using the technology I will be using in our shop.”
As a graduate of Southern University and Scotlandville Magnet High School, Hughes hopes to offer apprenticeships to students of area high schools with the goal of giving them hands-on experience and exposing them to entrepreneurship in an area where they are from.
“There is a drought in this area for economic opportunity,” Hughes says. “When you see the area around LSU, you see apartments and food places popping up everywhere. When I get off the interstate to go to Southern, it is like going back in time to 2001.”
However, he hopes the strategic placement of Capital City Collision, close to the corner of Scenic Highway and Choctaw Drive, just five minutes from downtown and near the interstate and Southern, will attract new traffic to north Baton Rouge.
And he’s not the only one.
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