By Steve McLinden
Life keeps throwing Cesar Figueredo hardballs, and while he’s been knocked down repeatedly, the New Orleans body shop owner always bounces back, recommits himself to his faith and resolves to make the best of things.
Figueredo and his Mid-City New Orleans shop, Cesar’s Collision Center, survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005, despite the lack of flood insurance, and was among the first body shops to reopen after the massive storm that inundated most of the New Orleans area.
In 2010, at about the time the 17,000-square-foot shop, which Figueredo operated with his wife and other family members, was building its business back to normal, Louisiana officials came calling. The state, it seemed, needed his property on Roman Street, near the Superdome, to construct a new, state-of-the-art LSU medical center and teaching facility.
“They took it by eminent domain and for what they said was fair-market value, but in my book it wasn’t,” Figueredo said. “It didn’t reflect what we had done here for years. But I had no choice; we had to get out, and I had to find another shop.”
He found one, the spacious 31,000-square-foot former D&G Body Shop building at 1636 St. Roch Ave., also in the Mid-City neighborhood. D&G had closed after Katrina, in part due to storm and the death of its co-founder David Forsythe. D&G had taken on more than three feet of water, but some equipment was salvageable.
“It was a fixe-upper when I got it,” Figueredo said.
But there was another snag that Figueredo had to untangle before he could move ahead. The facility had lost its certificate of occupancy after years of sitting empty. Because it was situated in a residential neighborhood, the city wouldn’t grant him a new certificate without a zoning variance.
“So I had to go to the city council, and that took a couple months,” he said.
And if that wasn’t enough, Figueredo was served with divorce papers and reqiured to pay out half his operation’s assets at a time when he could least afford the capital.
“I got through it after countless sleepless nights,” he said. “I came to realize that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. He helps us handle what we’re given.”
Cesar’s offers full mechanic duties as well as body work and vehicle painting.
“That way, customers don’t have to take their cars to two different shops,” he said.
The shop draws clients from all over the area, ranging from executives to his Mid-City neighbors.
“One of my greatest joys is taking care of the customer,” he said.
The shop maintains an A-plus rating from the Better Business Bureau and typically draws rave reviews online.
“Cesar’s will give it to you straight,” wrote one customer on Google reviews. “No surprise fees, no technical jargon…just honest work that’s worth the cost.” Another commented: “These folks do great work and they’re affordable; I felt the whole time Cesar was trying to get the job done in a way that didn’t bust my wallet.”
Cesar’s, which Figueredo touts as “the cleanest shop in town,” employs a half dozen. While it doesn’t do direct-repair work, it maintains a solid working relationship with the major insurance companies and adjusters, said the owner. Mechanics are ASE-certified and technicians are I-CAR trained, Figueredo said. The shop is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and offers a shuttle service for customers. Equipment includes 10 frame machines, two computerized-mixing spray booths, six ground-anchored grabbers and a wealth of other major tools.
Figueredo, 53, attended Delgado Trade School for mechanic’s training but went to work for a van shop and then a trailer company as a body man before taking a full-time job as a mechanic. However, the mechanic shop lacked ethics, which was a huge turn-off, he said.
“I really hated their dishonesty, and that’s when I decided to open my own place to treat people fairly,” Figueredo said.
In the early 1990’s, he opened a small, sign-less shop in a cramped uptown New Orleans two-stall garage. He found himself slammed with work and soon expanded to seven stalls before moving to the Mid-City shop.
At times, Figueredo finds himself hearkening back to the bizarre scenes he confronted in Katrina’s aftermath at the old shop, which was only two years old when the storm hit. Martial law was still in force when Figueredo wound his way through receding side streets to recover three valuable assets — the watchdogs he left behind on the shop’s second floor. When he arrived, the dogs were extremely hungry but okay. The shop had only taken on two and a half feet of water, because it was perched a little higher than the rest of the neighborhood. However, a dozen customer cars were deemed total losses, fortunately covered by their owners’ insurance. Sadly, Figueredo’s own insurer had dropped coverage on him shortly before the storm.
He and two sons, Cesar Jr. and Angel, started the painful rehab work with limited resources and had to use a generator because the transformer across the street had blown. Figueredo would spend $25,000 from an SBA loan and more from his own coffers to reopen. Soon, however, business exploded as Cesar’s was one of only a few shops to reopen fairly quickly in the city.
While the struggles have obviously been many in his 34-year auto-repair career, Figueredo remains upbeat.
“God was with me all the way,” he said. •
