The CEO of Mile One Automotive has erected a Honda dealership, launched a Saturn showroom and opened a Honda service facility. But these are not your ordinary car dealerships, according to the Baltimore Business Journal. Amid the cars and service equipment are toddler play areas. And the waiting areas look like first-class airport

lounges, complete with telephones and Internet access.

"They have become very consumer-friendly," said Steven Fader, whose Baltimore-based Mile One owns 42 dealerships in the region. "It's an environment intended to both draw in the customer and keep the customer."

Mile One is not alone in developing this new style of dealership, the Baltimore Business Journal noted. Rising consumer expectations

and a hot auto sales market have pushed dealers to upgrade their facilities with a range of amenities rarely seen in the past.

"It can range from two choices of good coffee, to nice furniture in the customer lounge area, to Internet work stations so that the customers who want to stop for an oil change on the way to work can check their e-mail and make that time productive," said Paul Taylor, chief economist for the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) in McLean, Va.

Last October, about 20 percent of dealers nationwide said they had done major remodeling work within the past two years, and 27 percent said they had completed such work within the past five years, according to data compiled by NADA.