Les Schwab Tire Center

I started scouting Nebraska for Les Schwab back in 2022. They had told me Nebraska was coming, so I wanted to get out ahead of it and start figuring out the markets and where I thought we needed to be. In July 2024, I got the green light.
 

Sidney was one of the markets I had already spent time looking at, and I had a site I really liked. It was 2.4 acres, well positioned, and interestingly enough, it was owned by a hotel group out of Wyoming.

The property wasn’t listed for sale. There was no broker. No sign. Nothing. Just a cold call.
 

I tracked down the hotel group, eventually got to the principal, and learned they had originally purchased the land with plans to build but had since decided not to move forward. Even better, they owned another piece of land in Scottsbluff that I had already identified as a potential Les Schwab site.
 

One owner relationship suddenly gave us two opportunities.
 

They were open to selling, and we were able to put deals together pretty quickly on both properties.

Sidney was relatively clean until we got into title and found a fairly substantial development agreement recorded against the property. Under that agreement, the seller still owed its pro rata share of certain off-site improvements.

About $400,000. And it needed to be paid before I could get clean title.
 

That got my attention. I had no idea whether the ownership group had $400,000 sitting around or whether they were going to be willing to write that check. Something buried in a development agreement could have easily killed an otherwise great deal.
 

So I called them. Their response was basically, “Oh yeah, no problem. We’ll stroke a check.” Well, alright then.
 

It took a couple of weeks to get everything handled, but they did exactly what they said they would do. The $400,000 was paid, the title issue was cleared, and we closed.
 

From there, Les Schwab absolutely knocked the construction out of the park. They moved fast, did a great job, and the store opened last week.
 

Pretty cool to see this one finally come full circle. I started scouting Sidney back in 2022, two years before I even had the green light to put a deal together. By the time that call came in July 2024, I already knew the market and knew the site I wanted.

The property wasn’t for sale. One cold call to a hotel group in Wyoming ultimately turned into two off-market acquisitions for us, Sidney and Scottsbluff.
 

This one is now open and doing well. On to the next one.