Keith Powell has made a career out of restoring automobiles to their former luster.
Turns out he’s quite adept at bringing buildings back to life as well.
Powell has opened the doors to State Street Collision, 2725 N. State St., the former home of Irrigation & Turf Equipment.
While the business is new, Powell is anything but a newcomer, sporting 23 of experience in automotive repair and restoration.
The Colony native graduated from Crest High School in 2002, and WyoTech, one of the nation’s foremost automotive technical schools in the nation, a year later.
From there, he worked about a year at a street rod shop in Kansas City, before moving to Iola where he worked about seven years at Frank’s Auto Body, until former owner Frank Scheer sold off the business.
From there, Powell worked briefly at Richmond Body Works before returning to Iola, where he worked at Utley’s Auto Body for the past seven-plus years.
But he yearned to have his own business, and saw an opportunity when Irrigation & Turf moved its business to Gas about four years ago.
“I saw the building was listed for a pretty decent price,” Powell said.
He recalled closing the deal on a Friday.
An overnight rainstorm unveiled an unwelcome surprise the next day.
“When I came in, one of the shop bays was flooded because of a hole in the roof,” Powell recalled. “There were some unexpected issues.”
POWELL’S building, which also served as a Honda motorcycle dealership, had been expanded multiple times, Powell noted, to its current 12,000 square-foot size.
But aside from adding on to the structure, there had been little done in terms of maintenance, Powell noted.
That meant a complete renovation inside.
Powell added several walls inside the building to create a front lobby, an expansive area that could serve as a showroom, a separate break room and even shower and laundry facilities. And of course, he also had to do roof repairs to seal off the interior.
