Pickard Lane hosts official grand re-opening ceremony

By Riley Murphy

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Pickard Lane Automotive Group Inc. has officially welcomed the community to its brand-new building in Bolton.

Pickard Lane was founded by Frank Amerato and Sandra Amerato in 1996, and exactly 30 years later, on its anniversary, they celebrated their new home.

After initially breaking ground in 2022, Sandra Amerato explains that a process that should have taken a year ended up taking almost three times that long due to issues with their former contractor.

But, serendipitously, January 31 marked exactly 30 years for them.

“We didn't know that when we planned today. It just happened that way,” says Amerato.

She says that the grand re-opening was not only a way for the community to see their new building, but also to come out and meet their team.

With their previous location being much smaller, Amerato says that they are now able to offer more services than ever before, including shuttles and drop-off.

“Now we offer service for the Bolton community and surrounding,” she says. “The new building itself brings to the business a chance for us to expand what we do.”

At Pickard Lane, she explains they primarily sell pre-owned vehicles and export, something they have offered since 2016.

Now, they can expand their retail lot and also expand their services – not only automotive service, but detailing, tinting, and wraps, including wraps for higher-end models.

The new building includes a fully functional basement where Pickard Lane can park their cars and offers a warm space where people can see their vehicle before they pick it up. 

“We can offer services that the location prior didn't allow us to do because it was just too small and it wasn't laid out properly,” says Amatero. 

She adds that the next generation will be taking over the business.

“My husband and I started it and now the kids, my two boys, my daughter and my two daughters-in-law are running the business.”

Frank Amerato has been in the car business since the early 1980s, she explains.

“He started pumping gas at his dad's service station, and then he became a sales rep at his dad's automotive sales station. He quickly realized, ‘I love this and I just can't work for somebody. I need to have my own ideas and my own kind of dream,' and he just started on his own with a small kid, and a debt, and a mortgage,” says Amerato. “We're like, ‘OK, what are we doing?'

“We just did it and went for it, and it worked.”

What she believes truly sets Pickard Lane apart is their relationships with their customers.

“When we sell a car to a person, they're not just a customer that we just don't see anymore. We have relationships from people that bought from us in 1998 and they're still coming and they're sending their kids and their grandkids. It's all about the after service that you provide,” says Amerato.

For them, staying in the community has always been important.

Even during construction, they rented a smaller facility in Bolton for their mechanics and staff, and even a 200-square-foot trailer for their sales team to work from.

“We could have shut down and continued our wholesale operation,” says Amerato. “We could have done that, but we didn't. We incurred expenses… just to stay relevant and stay in the community, and not be gone and then come back.”

Amerato says her staff are heroes.

“Something that should have taken a year took over three and they put up with it and stuck by us.”

To reopen that day, Amerato says they didn't think they would get there, saying it was the longest three years of her life.

“We did stay in Bolton and we tried to still sell vehicles…we tried to keep our name out there as much as possible,” says Amerato. “We just hope that the community comes back and sees that we've never left. We've been in Bolton since 2008, and even when we were in the process of building, we stayed here and continued to serve the community and here we are today.

“It's a pretty cool milestone, really.”