American Dream

Research Triangle Park, NC - TTA agrees to pay $3.67M for less than two acres in downtown Raleigh and puts brothers out of business. Larry & Reece Hester probably couldn't stop TTA from taking the land via condemnation, they challenged the amount TTA offered. The two sides reached afigure in mediation, preventing them from having to argue the case in court. The brothers served a downtown clientele from a strategic location with little competition but plenty of state government workers who liked being able to walk to the office after dropping off their cars. Larry, an affable 57-year-old originally from Durham, developed an eye disease early in life that rendered him blind at age 35. He was able to continue working at the garage because he had become so familiar with where everything was. Every morning, he and Reece, now 47, would get a chance to talk about family and the business over coffee as they opened the store. Knowing that TTA was going to take the land, the brothers closed the business in December. "We thought and prayed hard about it for a long time," Larry says of the decision to close the business. "It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I had blood, sweat and tears in that place," he says.