This May, Crystal Car Wash at 901 S. Harlem Ave., was looking to expand its vacuum stations across Lexington Street for the second time in three years. But the initial Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, which would’ve been the first step of approval for the expansion, and the following one were cancelled, leading village staff and residents to believe the extension of the car wash is once again dead in the water.
Crystal Car Wash did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Also in the spring, three Elgin Avenue residents who live behind the car wash got legal representation in an effort to decrease the sound of new vacuums in a potential expansion, and to argue that the current car wash isn’t grandfathered into the village code because of the noise from the vacuum stations added to the east and west sides of the building.
“Really, what we want is a discussion, and there has been some,” said Sukrat Baber, an Elgin Avenue resident who lives behind Crystal Car Wash. He added that his attorney has been talking to the Crystal Car Wash’s attorney. “One of the things that we would like is for the vacuum [stations] on the west side to be removed.”
According to village code, businesses can’t disturb the peace with excessive noise between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. But Crystal Car Wash’s 24 free vacuum stations, which have vacuums and compression hoses that blow water off vehicles, run until the business closes at 9 p.m. That’s because, for decades, Premier Car Wash previously existed at the same address, and when Crystal Car Wash opened in 2018, the village grandfathered it into the version of the code that Premier followed, one before noise restrictions were created.
Mitchell Ashcroft and Mark Denny also live behind Crystal Car Wash on Elgin Avenue and said they were never disturbed by Premier Car Wash customers or noise. But Premier, they said, only had two coin-operated vacuums on the east side of the building.
In a letter sent to the Planning and Zoning Commission and village officials in May by Baber’s legal representation, the lawyer argued that if Premier Car Wash was a legal nonconforming use, then construction of new vacuum stations violates Section 9-9-3 of the village’s zoning ordinance that prohibits the expansion of nonconforming uses. If Premier Car Wash was a previously approved conditional use, Crystal Car Wash violates Section 9-10-7 of the zoning ordinance, which requires a conditional use to comply with the plans for the conditional use, the lawyer argued.
Steve Glinke, head of building and zoning in Forest Park, declined to comment.
“The operation that they’re currently running here is unlawful and not grandfathered as to the current state of the business, not grandfathered as to the nuisance, the noise and several other matters,” Baber told the Review.
Baber said construction of Crystal Car wash was dubbed a “remodel,” but Ashcroft and Denny say they saw how Premier Car Wash was demolished and its footprint expanded.
“Even if you have a legal nonconforming use, which we don’t believe it is, you still can’t be a nuisance pursuant to the code. You still have to make sure that the folks in the neighborhood are not bothered by excessive noise. You still have to make sure that setbacks and other things that were not a nonconforming use before the current code are being followed,” Baber said.
Baber said he contacted village staff about the excessive noise of the vacuum stations when he first moved to Forest Park last summer, and they suggested he speak with Glinke. Baber said Glinke told him to direct his noise complaints to the police department.
“We have repeatedly called the police because of particular instances, either where the hoses get choked or people are playing loud music,” Denny said. “The police will come out sometimes. No one has ever been cited.”
The car wash’s neighbors report cases of public urination, people throwing things in their trash, parking in their parking spots and lining up in the alleyway to use the vacuum stations.
Last year, Elgin Avenue residents called the police 45 times for issues at Crystal Car Wash, according to a self-kept log outlining hundreds of complaints since 2017. This year in January through April, there were 38 calls for incidents at the car wash, including alleged damage to property and noise complaints. Baber said, since then, “the noise hasn’t changed.”
While police have told Ashcroft, Baber and Denny that they’ve given warnings to car wash customers, it’s the Elgin Avenue residents who have been banned from the car wash property.
Baber said he’s emailed multiple videos of how loud the vacuums are to Crystal Car Wash owner Neil Rembos and village staff, and Forest Park police came to his door to say that car wash staff alleged Baber was tampering with the vacuum stations and harassing employees, so he’s prohibited from the property. Baber denies the accusations.
Ashcroft and Denny have also been banned from the property after being accused of harassing the car wash’s employees.
“I went out there once to ask the employees to fix the compression hoses because they kept running, and it was so loud they couldn’t hear me. I was gesturing like this,” Denny said, waving his pointer finger with his thumb out, “They had me on videotape making the trigger motion, so they filed a complaint against me.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Denny hired a lawyer and accepted a $75 settlement from Crystal Car Wash.
Baber said he reached out to village staff again after his lawyer’s letter in May but didn’t hear back.
Ashcroft and Denny said they previously attended a town hall with their neighbors, who signed a petition voicing their complaints, but never heard back from village staff. They added that village staff once came to their block of Elgin Avenue to hear residents’ concerns, and Crystal Car Wash leadership attended a neighborhood meeting to hear complaints and show specs for new equipment that would decrease noise.
“But all of a sudden, that turned conditional,” Ashcroft said. He said Crystal Car Wash presented the same specs to the village when the business first sought to expand across Lexington Street in 2021 and needed conditional use approval to do so.
In 2022, the Planning and Zoning Commission tabled the vote about whether to approve a conditional use permit, suggesting that Crystal Car Wash do a noise and traffic study.
According to Ashcroft and Denny, Crystal Car Wash did both studies. The car wash proposed constructing walls that block sound, as well as quieter vacuums and pressure hoses. According to the residents’ lawyer, the business said an expansion wouldn’t yield additional vehicle trips, since most visitors are existing customers, and that most traffic will travel across Lexington Street from the existing facility.
Baber said the traffic study was “insufficient, for lack of a better word, including this proposition that, ‘Well, it’s loud around here anyway. There’s all this ambient noise.’” Baber added, “There are busier parts of the day, but once you get to dinner time, when I would love to have dinner with my family in my backyard, we do not hear Harlem. We hear the car wash the whole time until 9 p.m. every day, 365 days a year.”