Crew Carwash plans to bring a location to the southeast corner of West Broadway and North County Road 700 West in McCordsville, near Meijer.
Mitchell Kirk | Daily Reporter
McCORDSVILLE — Crew Carwash is bringing a location to a prominent intersection and gateway into McCordsville.
The company plans to develop on about 2.5 acres at the southeast corner of West Broadway and North County Road 700 West, next to Meijer.
Bill Dahm, owner of Crew Carwash, said the company has been getting emails from people in the McCordsville area for years asking when it will bring a location nearby.
“People really want us out here,” Dahm said. “One of our busiest stores in our company is there at 56th Street and Pendleton Pike, so it would help us to have another facility two and a half miles further east, to take a little pressure off that busy store.”
It’ll be the company’s second location in Hancock County after recently opening one at 1726 State St. in Greenfield, and 45th company-wide. Most are in Indiana, but the business is starting to branch out into Minnesota as well.
Meijer, which owns the land in McCordsville the new Crew Carwash is slated for, requires that the building be on the far south side of the site in order to not interfere with sight lines of the super-center from the busy intersection.
Dahm said at a McCordsville Board of Zoning Appeals meeting earlier this week that Crew has 18 locations built since 2012 with an architectural feature consisting of a 35-foot-tall tower with signage on it.
That’s 15 feet higher than the top of the building’s highest point, something McCordsville planning and zoning officials weren’t keen on. Ryan Crum, assistant town manager of planning and development, noted it’s nearly double the height of the building.
“The scale just does not seem in keeping with the building size to us,” Crum said.
But Dahm said the new trademark feature is needed particularly in this instance due to how far off the road the building needs to be to appease Meijer. He added impulse fuels much of the company’s business.
“We need that architectural feature so that the customers that drive our business that are impulse customers can look over and easily see that it’s a Crew Carwash,” Dahm said.
Crum suggested a compromise of allowing the tower to be 8 feet higher than the building’s highest point, which the board of zoning appeals approved.
“It’s a little less than I wanted,” Dahm said after the meeting.
But likely not a deal-killer.
“I think it’s going to work,” he said.
He anticipates construction starting this summer and for the location to open by the end of the year. It will employ about 20 and be open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week.
