Keystone-Harley Davidson buys land in Whitehall for new dealership

By next fall, Whitehall Township will have a new Keystone Harley-Davidson dealership near the busy intersection of MacArthur and Eberhardt roads.

Bob Eggstein, owner of Keystone Harley-Davidson, said he would move his dealership, which has about 25 employees in Parryville, Carbon County, to the Whitehall location when it opens in fall 2020.

Feinberg Real Estate Advisors LLC of South Whitehall Township, said it represented Keystone Harley-Davidson, from contact to closing, in the purchase of about three acres at 2800 Eberhardt Road for the 25,000-square-foot dealership.

Cindy McDonnell Feinberg said she represented Keystone Harley-Davidson for real estate brokerage services and Gregg Feinberg of Feinberg Law Office provided legal services for the purchase, township approvals, financing, title insurance and closing of the property.

The land sold for slightly more than $1 million.

Steve Cihylik of Hanna Frederick Commercial in South Whitehall Township represented the seller, Gilboy Ford-Mercury, Inc.

“It has been a long process to get all this done,” Eggstein said. “There has not been a Harley-Davidson dealership in the Lehigh Valley for more than 10 years.”

Harley-Davidson had a dealership slightly outside the valley in Coopersburg that closed in 2011. A long time ago, it had a dealership near Planet Trog, a laser tag center off MacArthur Road in Whitehall, he said.

Harley-Davidson Motor Co. was interested in having a dealership in the region again, he said.

Eggstein said many of his employees at the Parryville location live between the Lehigh Valley and Parryville, so most if not all would be coming with the company to Whitehall.

“It’s not only a big market for our current customers, it’s going to give us access to a deeper demographic down there,” Eggstein said.

Keystone Harley-Davidson will introduce an electric motorcycle next week and eventually start offering other products such as “street fighter” bikes, adventure touring bikes for varied terrain and electric bikes for kids, he added.

The new dealership will also offer charging stations for bikes and vehicles.

“It also opens up a market for our service markets,” Eggstein said.

Typically, the Parryville site gets busier on weekends because that’s when many customers come in for service. However, the Whitehall location offers opportunities for people to stop in more frequently during the week.

“It goes from a destination dealership to an ‘on the way’ dealership,” Eggstein said.

The Feinbergs were instrumental in navigating the complexities of this type of development project, he added.

“It was a great project, it certainly had a lot of complexities to it,” said Cindy McDonnell Feinberg. “We were in search of a location that would offer convenience for Harley clients and be a great central Lehigh Valley location.”

The search for the property began in 2014.

Though Eggstein declined to disclose the estimated construction cost, he plans to have site work start in November and complete the construction in fall 2020.

The company hired Boyle Construction of South Whitehall Township as the construction firm and MKSD architects of South Whitehall Township as the architect.