Taghon’s New Garage is ripe in the Land of the Sleeping Bear

By Norm Wheeler
Sun editor
One of Empire’s longest running businesses just packed up and left its historic digs on the corner of M-22 and M-72. Taghon’s Auto Service Garage has been a fixture in the village of Empire since 1924 when Charles and Louise Taghon established a car repair shop on the current site of the Lakeshore Motel. Across the street and kitty-corner from Taghon’s was Verno & Middaugh’s repair shop, later a Sinclair gas station. Charles and Louise’s son Fred took over that location in 1945.

The building itself has an interesting history. It was made of hand-made cement blocks manufactured right in Empire for a building that used to stand downtown between what is now Deering’s Market and Tiffany’s Norwegian Jokes and Ice Cream Shop. Dave Taghon reports that the building was moved block by block to the corner and reassembled where it now stands. “It’s easy to spot some of those old hand-made blocks on the back of the building,”
Mike Taghon took over the garage in 1958 and handed it off to his sons Dennis and Wayne when he entered semi-retirement a few years ago. (Fred had taken over the gas station across M-72 on the other corner and operated it until he retired in 1980. Dave continued to run the Amoco Food Shop until his retirement in 2002.) So four generations of Taghon’s fixing cars on the corner has come to an end.
It wasn’t easy for this fourth generation of Taghon auto mechanics to leave the village.
Dennis Taghon explains: “About a year ago the old Empire School was purchased, and the owner (Joe Van Esley, a realtor from Plymouth) wanted the parking lot where we kept the cars we worked on. That got us to dreaming about having a newer, bigger, more modern facility. We were tired of pushing disabled vehicles across a busy state highway.” (Mike Taghon tells the story of a trucker who used to barrel through Empire from the south like no village was there. One day Mike heard him coming and rolled an air filter out of the garage across M-22. The trucker locked up his breaks and slid through the blinker hissing like a punctured blimp. “He drove slow after that,” Mike laughs.)
“At first the idea of moving was enticing,” Dennis remembers, “and finally we said ‘Let’s do it!’” All last summer Taghon researched whether they could move within the village. “Perk tests showed the high water mark was only three feet down here in Empire,” Dennis continues. “We would need a septic system, plus a backup septic system, plus a water retention pond – there would be nowhere to park cars after we satisfied the county regulations. We would have needed to purchase way more property than we could afford.”
Then Dennis got a call from Ron Bishop, owner of the subdivision with storage buildings on Benzonia Trail. At 300 feet above the water table there were no septic issues out there by the Empire Airport. So the new garage was built just behind the Old Iron Custom Auto body shop. Taghon’s new address is 12777 Benzonia Trail and it keeps the same phone number: (231) 326-5138. “The dream of a bigger, more efficient place coupled with economics and county regulations basically drove us out of town,” Dennis declares.
The new garage is a big improvement. It features six hoists and a capacity of up to 10 cars. The layout is more efficient as no cars will be blocked in. There is room for customer parking in front and disabled car parking in the back. “There will be a better flow,” Dennis says. There are three full-time mechanics including Wayne Taghon, along with a service advisor, and Dennis as manager (and Mike still around as gofer). They expect to add another employee as business dictates. “We have room to grow – that’s why we built it as big as we did!”
Dennis Taghon concludes that moving their business out of town should help with the traffic flow at the busiest corner in Empire. “It should be an improvement for everyone involved. Of course we’re apprehensive about not being right in the village. But we’re hoping our customers will follow.” The fate of the historic garage at “Taghon’s Corner” made of local hand-made cement blocks remains to be seen.