County moves toward making new car washes a harder sell in Pasco

WESLEY CHAPEL — Future car washes may be an endangered species in Pasco County, if the County Commission proceeds with adopting new rules that could severely curtail the industry’s growth.After weeks of hammering out something it thinks works, and in the process postponing a decision meeting after meeting, the Planning, Development and Economic Growth Department presented a proposal Sept. 3 to the board that amends the county’s land development code.The vote to adopt that proposal, which the county says will preserve job-generating land and curtail the frequency of car washes in busy transportation corridors, will be held at the commission’s Tuesday meeting.One of the most notable changes: Car washes will be prohibited in the Connected City, the county’s northern and southern innovation zones, as well as the community hub special planning areas.They will also be limited in the Villages of Pasadena Hills development and prohibited in most future land uses that are reserved for employment-generating uses.Because the facilities only produce a handful of jobs, if that, and many are located on what the county considers prime real estate on major roads, the expansion of car washes has been a sticky issue for officials .While the county won’t ban car washes altogether, it will make building them in areas they were previously allowed much more difficult.The county, at the first reading of the ordinance on Sept. 3, sought to require that car washes be subject to additional review standards.The Local Planning Agency proposed several amendments that the PDE says are consistent with the county’s comprehensive plan.The one that will have the largest impact: bagging a distance-between-car washes requirement and replacing it by making car washes a conditional use, meaning several stringent conditions must be met before approval.“The Local Planning Agency changed it to say all car washes should now be conditional use permits, because we can better control the proximity issue through a conditional use permit process,” said Nectarios Pittos, the county’s director of planning services.Requirements under the conditional use standards include the applicant having to establish a public need and completing an inventory of all car washes within a 5-mile radius of a proposed car wash. Noise limits and appropriate hours of operation will also be implemented, and a decommissioning plan will be established in case the car wash goes out of business.Also, enhanced buffering and setbacks would be enforced.The new plans also require a neighborhood meeting before approval, although that requirement may not make it into the final version.However, Pittos said it would be required for all car washes.But the effectiveness of neighborhood meetings was debated, and District 3 Commissioner Kathryn Starkey said that standard for car washes seemed “weird to me, because you don’t do a neighborhood meeting for a McDonald’s or a bank.”She added that as a result, she actually felt bad for the car wash owners.District 4 Commissioner Lisa Yeager called it “discriminatory.”District 2 Commissioner Seth Weightman asked if the neighborhood meeting rule was the result of the new Jammin’ Car Wash that recently “popped up” in Seven Oaks, as the commissioner put it. But he did not get an answer.The debate over how to slow down the proliferation of car washes in Pasco County has been a hot topic for years, and even more so recently as they began appearing more frequently.Last fall, the county decided to do something about it and issued a directive to the PDE to regulate the frequency and location of future car washes.In April, Weightman and his staff put together a map showing just how many car washes (and storage units, another issue the county has already dealt with) were in his district and pushed harder for a solution.According to Pittos, his department’s own map showed that Pasco County has 25 freestanding car washes, four freestanding car wash facilities in various cities, 10 self-service car wash facilities, four hand-wash car service facilities and 29 gas stations with car washes.“That’s approximately 72 different types of opportunities to wash one’s car,” he said.Pittos said the larger concern was the location of those car washes.He named 19 major north-south roads in the county, like U.S. 19, Starkey, U.S. 41 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, as well as six major east-west roads, like state roads 52, 54 and 56. All are important and busy business and transportation corridors.“And this is kind of an important point to consider, because these are limited frontages,” Pittos said. “There are not that many opportunities for employment-generating land uses to line up on these major cross-county roadways. And so, one ought to be considerate of the types of uses that are putting themselves along these roads.”Pittos said the county is also not pleased that the car washes were “also creating a certain visual that we potentially wanted to avoid.”He cited some of the gaudier structures, which Weightman referred to as looking like miniature golf courses.“I’m excited to see the finished product here,” Weightman said. “And all the folks out and about throughout Pasco County are as well. We’ve heard it loud and loud and clear: Hey, what’s up with all these car washes, and looking like putt putt golf courses with sharks and all sorts of funny things? So I’m glad that we’re moving towards a direction to make our car wash product look a little more professional.”Between now and the final vote on the plans, county planners and stakeholders are expected to hold a few more meetings and make some tweaks to the proposals.Attorneys Clarke Hobby and Barbara Wilhite, who represent many of the developers that come before the board, both said they had concerns about the effects of some of the language in the proposal, as well as other issues.“There’s some language issues with this draft that we received last week that are still really problematic,” Hobby said, but added he hoped they would be ironed out before by the final vote.District 5 Commissioner Jack Mariano also did not like gas stations like 7-Eleven that had car washes attached to them being included in some of the restrictions.And Weightman was not enthusiastic about the decommissioning aspects of the proposal.“I’m very glad to see movement on this project,” he said. “It’s clear that we have car washes all over the county. You’ve seen my maps. We’ve seen yours. Now, I want to make sure, before the second reading of this, that we have all the kinks worked out.”

County moves toward making new car washes a harder sell in Pasco

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