We're gonna have a conversation with a woman you heard fairly recently.
She is the owner of the Gleam Haunted car wash.
It's not haunted all year long, It's only haunted for a couple of weekends in October. But she is being haunted right now by the prospect of a big car wash chain dropping in right down the street from her. Lots of private money, and I'm gonna explain where that private money is coming from in the car wash industry in just a minute.
But this is creating a huge problem.
So joining me again, Emily Barrada, Welcome back to the show.
Oh Mandy, thank you for having me back. This show is so fun. You are so good.
I appreciate it.
Well, let's talk for a second. I mean, how long have you owned your car washes? You have one on East Call Fax and one where's the other one? I'm sorry, I don't know exactly where that is.
So I've got the one on East Call Fax is two years old. The one in the Denver Highlands just turned nine. Okay, we have had a good, successful run. We have a great little car wash, two great little car washes.
So what is happening now to reat in your existence. And I don't mean to be dramatic, but this actually is a threat to your existence.
Actually, that's not being dramatic whatsoever. That's that's why I am here. So I was very surprised to hear that aroa planning commission and a wor city council seems poised to basically do nothing but facilitate the entrant of quick trips new bubble bath car wash less than half a mile from my brand new location. You know, I scraped together all my money, all my friend's money, money from people from church like we we invested millions of dollars
in this blighted stretch along East Call Fax. We put in my second location blood sweat, tears, and it's it's been taken a while for it to stabilize, but we put out a great car. It was a conditional use, which is sort of a nerdy term. And I didn't think that city council or planning would let would let another competitor in that close because the big guys they use a ton of water, they use a ton of energy. It's a bad land use and they're we gonna put me out of business.
So let me ask you said conditional use. What does that mean?
So it basically gives city council the authority to say not this use, not here, not now. So city Council's job, as I understand it, in part, is to look at allocation of resources which belong to all of us, and say, okay, we do want water used for this purpose, we do want land used for this purpose, or we don't like
this is not a good use of this land. This is not like we don't want to We don't want a car wash here right now, because in the last three years we have permitted fifteen brand new car washes in Aura alone, and it's enough. We just we don't want them that close. We don't want that many. We only have so much potal water. I don't know about you, Mandy, I my kids and I we started learning how to ski a couple of years ago. The snowpack is low,
like drink up of water is a scarce resource. And we shouldn't be letting in big chains who are going to put little guys out of business. No more haunted tunnels.
Well, and there's more than that.
And this is kind of what I wanted to bring up because I find this fascinating. Now, I am not I'm not mad at people finding ways to use the tax code to their advantage. Right, as long as you are legally using the tax code and you're mitigate, I'm.
All for that.
However, people don't realize, and maybe they've noticed this in their communities, how many gas stations, car washes have popped up all over the area. And there's a big reason for it. Bonus depreciation is what we're gonna This is gonna go so nerdy and so hard. Just just bear with me, you guys. Bonus depreciation which allows businesses to depreciate or excuse me to, to mark off on their taxes a certain amount for business depreciation of equipment that
they have purchased. And it's a reasonable thing to allow people to depreciate the cost of that equipment because they have to pay for it over time and it decreases.
There's a lot of reasons for it, but it's not a dumb thing.
So it was expanded under Trump's twenty seventeen tax over which temporarily allowed one hundred percent ride offs on qualifying assets. The perk began shrinking by twenty percentage points each year after twenty twenty two, meaning a ten million dollar and they use private jets. That's another thing right now, is private jets. A ten million dollar plane bought in twenty
twenty three could generate an eight million dollar deduction. Okay, because of the way this is written, So a car wash is one of those things that can actually give you that massive deduction because it is so equipment intensive, especially to open it up. So gas stations and car
washes are incentivized. In what you have now is you have large hedge funds, you have venture capitalists, you have other ultra wealthy people who are investing in car washes, gas stations, and private planes as a means of writing things off on their taxes, which I'm not mad at them about. But why is Aroar letting it happen so close to an existing car wash?
That's the question I'd like an answer to.
I would love an answer to that too, And I would ask your listeners to call city Council three o three seven three nine seven oh one five, or they can go to Gleam car Wash backslash be smart and it'll give you all the links to your city council and your mayor and you can say, hey, Listen, we love our little local car wash, which incidentally where women owned, locally owned. We're the greenest car wash probably in the country,
and twenty percent of my staff is neurodiverse. I'm guessing, do you guys know what that means.
Yeah, it means that they may have some uh maybe they're on the autism spectrum, or they have a developmental delay that maybe would keep them from succeeding at a more high tech job.
Well, and I mean I have had people on the spectrum start here and be non verbal, and after like six or twelve months, they're on a team. They're treated with respect, they're paid according to like their skill set. Along with everybody else. They boss me around. We have seen lives and I'm not joking. We we have transformed lives. And we do this voluntarily. We don't get any tax breaks. We just we started doing this. A friend of mine runs a big nonprofit that only employs people on the spectrum,
and we found a place for them here. And so not only well, not only will they put me out of business by allowing Quick Trip to put in their their bubble bath car wash, which will be another poorly run water guzzling car wash, but they're potentially going to put both my businesses out of out of business. That's fifty jobs. Twenty percent go to people on the autism spectrum or horror neurodiverse. We have, we have, We give
back in every way that we possibly can. It seems like we are the sort of business that city council and elected representatives should go out of their way to help thrive, not just sit idly by while while while we gasp for air and die, especially after investing all this time, all this money, all this space and trying to help ease coal facts.
Is this is this car wash attached to a Quick Trip or is it a standalone My.
I understand is that it is. Oh it's owned by Quick Trip, and I'd be immediately adjacent.
So like you go, you.
Get gas, you get a discount on a car wash. You never even have to leave their site, so.
You essentially they could approve the Quick Trip and not approve the bubble thing.
The Quick Trip convenience store and fueling station is already built. Okay, Okay, being fine, they don't need this car wash. They just they just want a car wash, So yeah.
They can all the tax right off. Let's be real.
We just went over why the car washes are so valuable for the companies that want to open them. And again, I'm not mad at the companies for wanting to do this, but if you're going to come in, is there any mechanism that you're aware of, because it seems to me that a planning commission should be around to say, hey, we should do this a little further away.
Yes, And in fact, a lot of planning commissions and city councils are doing this. Lakewood just did this. Boulder has a version of this. This is happening in Texas. This is not This is not a weird idea that there are certain types of businesses that should be spaced far enough apart for the betterment of all of us.
Whether it is whether it's exhaust fumes, whether it's water use, whether it's anti competitive and anti free market like, the people are moving in this space to recognize that this isn't fair and this isn't right right, and city council has this is a conditional use. Quick Trip does not have a use by right to put a car wash on that land they have. They need permission, and a city council needs all it up and say we're sorry, but not right now, just not right now.
I you know, I live in an area of Douglas County where there's it's a running joke on next door whenever there's something breaks ground, it's like, oh, what kind of car wash are we getting there? It's it's insane. So now that I know the motive behind it, I'm I am. I understand it. But at the same time, it's like, let's be smart about this. If you want, if quick trip wants to open a place, you know
a couple of miles away, knock yourself out. But let's not put someone out of busy is an independent operator, because you're not going to be able to compete on price.
I'm guessing I can't compete on price.
And these guys, as you mentioned earlier, these are ultra wealthy organizations or people. I am not ultra wealthy. I have one little car wash in Denver, and I opened a second car wash, and we scraped together the money for a very significant investment where no one had put private dollars in that stretch of these collfacs between Chambers and airport in a long long time. And I did that, and I took a chance, and now I'm wondering if if I should regret that.
Yeah, I hate to think that you would be regretting that. But here we are.
So what exactly you're asking people to call city council? What are the next steps? Can this be stopped?
It can't. City council needs, in my opinion, to do with their job. So call city councilor go to glean car wash backslash be smart. Council needs to call up the decision that the Planning Commission made because Planning said, oh okay, fine, we don't care like put another CA wash in half a mile from a brand new, locally owned car wash for it. City Council needs to call up that decision and approve the call up. And then the council needs to say we have changed and they've
done this in the past. This is not novel. Just doesn't happen all the time. They need to say, nope, you know what, We're going to reverse Planning Commission's decision. This is not something that we want right now, So this conditional use is denied and that's that all right.
I would urge people, I hope have you reached out directly to any members of the city council.
I have and I do have some sympathetic ears. I also didn't hear anything back from some of them either, So I mean call council, like, yeah, and you vote, and you want local businesses that give back to survive, speaking don't want flight.
Yeah, speaking of survive, you can go to glean this weekend and maybe yes, maybe die or fright, that's what she's she.
Needs her help with. Call city council. But then she's gonna scare you to death. This is gonna a death, Emily, what else? What else?
To go ahead and tell people a little bit again, remind him about the haunted car wash this weekend.
We've got two haunted car washes and actually we decided to do Thursday, which is the day before Thanksgiving. So we have one day left Halloween for Halloween. One yes, one day left, seven to nine, nine thirty. If we've got a line, which we have had the last two nights, and we want to give a shout out to a rod. He came to our first car wash out in Roy. He came for two hours. He was dressed up as a scary clown. He was amazing. It was super duper fun.
So Yeah, everybody come out seven to nine both locations this Thursday last night.
Only you know what I'm just gonna say, Emily, Perhaps maybe somebody unscary could be there with a petition for city council.
Oh yeah, I like this.
Yeah, utilize great people that are going to be in line and ask them to support your car wash.
I'm just throwing that out there. Yeah.
Or maybe make one of the scary things in the car wash big government.
So there you go, Emily Veron. I appreciate your time today so much.
All right, Minni Connell, thank you for having me on your show, not once but twice and lending me a rod. And I hope I get to do this again.
I hope so too. Emily, thanks so much. We'll talk to you, talk to you again soon.
All right, thank you, thank you,