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Comment by diogenescynic | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't mention it, but I read another article about car washes that argued they're used as a way to speculate on commercial real estate in cities because the car washes provide just enough revenue to pay for the purchase of the land and property taxes. Then when the land becomes valuable they can sell it to another developer.

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I wouldn’t think they would be especially cheap to build though?

Sophisticated machinery, lots of plumbing?

I think there are companies that build/sell turnkey carwashes. I don't think it's very sophisticated to be honest. It's really just a couple of high pressure sprayers, some soap/foaming sprayers, and a track that pulls the car. It's all technology that's been available for decades. I bet there's a factory in China just pumping out car wash components.

You can buy them out of a catalogue, and if you need it in a building I think the building requirements are simpler than most other retail space. I used to work in the railroad industry and even train washes, a much rarer thing than car washes, were purchased practically as turnkey things.

There's a lot of unseen plumbing there, though, mostly underground tanks to handle storing graywater (cities have fairly stringent rules about discharge rate, so you have to store and slowly release a lot of water over time), plus (increasingly these days) reverse osmosis systems and graywater scrubbers for recycling. Most of the cost there goes into construction, not components, of course, but it's considerably more complex a build than older setups.

There’s a car wash in my area that is one of the “upscale” hand wash places. At that point, you’re just paying for people to do the washing and some standard water hookups. No fancy machinery, just a few buildings and some basic equipment.

They also have a giant sign in front of the building stating it’s for lease.

The machinery is all commoditized and the same. Plumbing as a trade has been around for thousands of years. The level of sophistication here is limited.

Here are some prices, but they vary a lot: https://www.carwashconsignment.com/equipment/automatics

The machinery can be moved to another site.

Just like storage units?

Absolutely. I can think of a few storage units that are in prime real estate locations that make no sense--like right across the street from Oracle Park in San Francisco. Has to be some of the most expensive real estate in the entire city/state and it's being used for storage units...

Could that land have toxic soil, and therefore not be zoned for anything else?

When in doubted the answer is always "because something is utterly fucked in that zone" and done by humans.

In SF, the answer is always "because the neighbours complained".

Are the rates comparatively expensive?

How about in the heart of San Francisco at Otis and 13th? Then again, the Walgreens at 16th st Bart is still sitting empty, as well as the burger king next door to it, so there's something fucked with incentives and regulations and zoning that means we're not making use of some of the most lucrative real estate in a highly desirable market. Calle 11 on 11th is another that's sitting unused for unknown reasons.

Probably easy to manage 10 of them too. Not much training to do, only stock a few products, only a few important KPIs.

The most famous of those is parking lots. I'm not sure car washes are the same, because a car wash is way more expensive than paving a lot.

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