What does Pasco plan to combat spread of so many car washes, storage units?

WESLEY CHAPEL — The proliferation of car washes in Pasco County is no secret, not even to the people, handcuffed by zoning regulations, who continue to OK their construction.

District 2 County Commissioner Seth Weightman sees it, just like you do.

He drives around and is mesmerized by the number of car washes. Even before he was elected in 2022, he and his wife would marvel at their growth.

“There’s another one,” she would say.

And another one.

And another one.

“I mean, even my grandparents who were in their 90s mentioned it,” said Weightman, who as the representative for most of Wesley Chapel and Land O’Lakes, may see more car washes in his daily travels than anyone.

So Weightman decided to have his staff make an interactive map, pinpointing the location of every car wash and self-storage unit in the county.

“Wow,” was Weightman’s reaction.

At the last commission meeting April 10, he presented the map to his fellow commissioners.

“We felt it was significant enough to bring to the board,” he said.

He asked them to look how close all the car washes and storage units were to each other, and the high visibility locations they inhabited.

“What can we do?” Commissioner Kathryn Starkey said. “It’s zoning.”

But the county is doing something.

Dave Engel, the county’s director of planning and economic growth, told the board April 9 that a few initiatives are on the way to deal with car washes, and for that matter, storage units.

“The first one that will be here in front of board in next month or so will be a car wash ordinance, addressing the frequency and distribution of car washes,” he said, adding that some “regulatory refinements” were on the way.

Weightman is eager to see what the county planners come up with. He recognizes the problem, which is why he had the interactive map made.

“It was a pet project,” he said. “We went and took everything that’s pending, where we know car washes exist and where we saw them being built, and we built this live map. And when you draw a radius around where these car washes and storage facilities are, it’s pretty dense. I mean, it is dense.”

The map is a work in progress. His staff has started in Land O’Lakes and Wesley Chapel, which is mostly complete, and is working its way to the west and east areas, which have their own car wash and storage issues.

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In just Wesley Chapel alone, there are roughly 23 car washes and 12 storage units. Some of the car washes are so close together that they are on top of each other on the map.

Barely two days after Weightman shared his map with the Wesley Chapel Beacon, there were two more car washes to add.

It’s hard to begrudge any business owner who decides on a car wash or storage unit. They can be lucrative, thanks to a subscription model and low-labor requirements. They can be great businesses, if you’re lucky enough to own one in a prime location in a quickly growing area with lots of people who drive lots of cars. And in Pasco County, it’s not difficult to build one … or two. Weightman said he received an email from a business owner getting ready to open a car wash on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, who also inquired about doing another in the near future on State Road 56 … and he may not stop there.

Unless, of course, the county decides to make it harder, by deciding on a plan to space them out and limit their spread.

Weightman thinks his map, with the clusters of car washes and storage units, makes a pretty good case.

“A picture speaks 1,000 words, right?” he said.

Or, you know, in this case, a thousand car washes and storage units.

Now, that’s a joke you might see on social media, where folks who live in the county just assume that every batch of construction is to build a car wash or storage unit.

What’s going up next to the Target? someone might post, followed by comments that say car wash, car wash with a storage unit, storage unit with an indoor car wash … and a few comments about a chicken sandwich place, of course.

Those are jokes.

But sometimes, they aren’t.

“I’ve seen them. We’re hearing it from the public, we’re hearing it from friends and family,” Weightman said. “It’s in our email inboxes: Here we go again, another car wash and another storage facility and another apartment complex.”

The map, Weightman says, is just a proactive way to engage the board, which is well aware of the issue. It has been discussed in previous meetings, in previous years.

Weightman doesn’t begrudge the business owners, but he does wonder if too many of them are taking up space that can be better utilized.

“I’m hoping that we come up with some sort of plan to make sure that we’re not losing our prime commercial job-creating sites to something that doesn’t necessarily provide the wages and the level of jobs that we’re working so incredibly hard to attract here in Pasco County,” he said.

And it’s not just a Pasco County problem.

Last month in Cape Coral, the City Council implemented a moratorium on building self-storage and car wash businesses for the rest of the year.

The reason? Exactly what Weightman said, the loss of prime commercial real estate to a business that “will be a better service for the community in the long run,” said Tom Hayden, one of the Cape Coral council members.

You could argue the county’s triumvirate of headaches — apartments, car washes and self-storage units — are intertwined in the state’s housing market.

People moving here in droves are having a harder time affording, or finding, homes, so they move into apartments.

Those who move into apartments have stuff. That stuff needs to go somewhere, like storage units.

And more apartments, say 350 on a dozen or so acres that might otherwise accommodate 50 homes means more cars.

And cars get dirty.

Hence, car washes.

In fact, Weightman says he would like to see an apartment builder incorporate storage units and car washes into their projects.

And the county has looked into storage units that also offer retail and commercial options, maybe shops and offices on the lower level and storage units on the floors above. It’s being done elsewhere, Weightman said.

But for now, the county needs a plan, and Weightman says he is eager to see it.

“More and more of these are starting to pop up on that new stretch of State Road 52 from I-75,” Weightman said. “So, we built our map to show hey, let’s get moving here and help us understand what our options are before we lose more valuable commercial, job creating spaces.”

John C. Cotey is the managing editor of the Tampa Beacon. He can be reached at jcotey@tampabeacon.com