Self Serve Wash Land

Would I be able to fit a self serve car wash on a piece of land that is, 75 feet in width and 180 feet in length? If so how many bays could I fit?

Subtract front and rear yard building setbacks from the property length and divide the remainder by 14' or 16' would give you the number of wand-bays you could fit.

My first wash is 14,222 sq feet. Set perpendicular to street (not good). It was 7 self serve bays and I just converted two of them to IBA's. 120' street by 118' side. approx 18' by 118 is wasted with required greenspace landscaping - no cars. It is tight but doable for an in city location.

If you are in a competitive market, I would walk away from a perpendicular site.

Better to be parallel to the road, with any wash but especially self serve. I'm sure the land is cheaper but the frontage is worth the investment.IMHO

My closest competitor is about 3 miles away and in a bad part of the city. I am not sure how to judge how competitive the market is. But I seriously doubt anyone will be building any new in-city car washes any time soon. Land is jsut a little too expensive.

Ok, for horizontal orientation, subtract side yard building setbacks from the property width and divide the remainder by 14' or 16' would give you the number of wand-bays you could fit.

With a perpendicular layout, I worry about site visibility. Location, location, location refers to not just the traffic count in front but how long that traffic has to see your site and determine what's going on there. Restaurant, oil lube, office etc, etc.

Vacs out front with small but attractive canopies can help...signage will help. I have a full serve that had a MAJOR increase in business when I doubled the frontage for the operation and we had been there 20 years. People can drive past your place everyday for years and not know you are there.

If you make me choose between good visibility or good egress and ingress, i pick visibility. The more seconds a driver has to see your building and determine what it is, the better. Businesses on curves, very high or very low compared to the highway, merges out front, hard medians, tall buildings next door and close...they all have major strikes against them.
Traffic congestion is requiring drivers to keep their eyes on the road more than ever.

If it costs $100k to fill your land in and make it higher than the street...that is better money spent than signage. If you can find a lot with more frontage, it could be worth $100k more to invest in.

There are several closed ss units in my area that were built 30 years ago when the thought was secondary locations were adequate. Newer units have replaced these on prime locations.

There are no absolutes...just guidelines.