Two auto techs, displaced after their garage in TC’s Warehouse District was sold, are on to bigger and better things: They’re opening their own auto maintenance shop.

The name: TC Public Service Garage. The operators: brothers Steve and Al Robideau. The man behind the plan: local attorney Allen Anderson.

Anderson, whose office is near the shuttered Midas shop on the Grandview Parkway, loved having his car serviced by Jerry Roster’s team. So he thought it strange when he called for brakes one day and no one answered. He soon discovered the building had been purchased to make way for Hotel Indigo and that the shop’s techs – two who’d been there 17 years – were without jobs. Worse, one was packing for Arizona.

“These guys had developed a really good reputation,” he says.

When he tracked down the Robideau brothers, and they offered to fix Anderson’s brakes right in their front yard, a light bulb went off.

“I said to them, ‘Why don’t you find a corner garage and open up a little station?” Sensing their hesitance, he added, “If I could find a way to get it funded, would you start your own business?’”

“At first I thought it was too good to be true,” recalls Steve Robideau. “The second time he said it, I said, ‘Well, you must be serious.’”

The next day, they found a foreclosed building: formerly Joe’s Auto Repair on Diamond Drive, just off Cass. With help from Realtor Ken Kleinrichert, Anderson wrote an offer, and TBA Credit Union accepted it.

“Then it was a matter of getting it financed,” Anderson says. “Dan Stout at Huntington came in on a Saturday, and on Sunday helped put the paperwork together and got it to the SBA.”

Now, the five-bay garage is being revamped from top to bottom with new floors, large glass-panel doors and new hoists – including a 16,000-pound hoist big enough to handle the largest of trucks.

The equipment is state-of-the-art and made in America, and they’ve applied for help from TCL&P to put in LED lighting.

In addition to auto maintenance and repairs, they’ll do custom exhaust jobs and have specialized equipment to work on vintage cars.

Once it opens the first week of April, hours will be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, and on Sundays for emergencies. They’ll also offer a shuttle service and vehicle pick up and drop off.

“This is all about customer service,” says Anderson, who’s formulated a 10-percent corporate discount card.

TBA Credit Union is distributing the discount cards to its members “to help drive business to the shop,” notes Robin Ahart, TBA marketing coordinator.

Anderson hopes to hire two more techs by year’s end, yet he downplays his role in creating the new enterprise: “It’s been a whole bunch of people pulling on the oars at the same time.”

But Steve Robideau sees it a different way. “He’s a savior, that’s for sure.”