If it’s anything like the 3 that have opened in my town of 80k in literally the last year it’s because they’re huuuuuuge. The wash itself is 100+ft long, and tons of parking, vacuums, etc.
Just one of those things takes up the space of 3 or 4 normal gas stations.
The crazy thing is that after a small wave of initial enthusiasm, they hardly ever even have customers.
Then we get to look at ugly shell of it for years. Commercial real estate is not exactly booming. Most of those places are probably borderline superfund sites with all the chemicals that leach into the soil, anyway.
A bunch of the same business also takes away space from the sorts of businesses that your region probably lacks which would make the town more self-sufficient, interesting, and/or economically productive: a butcher, a jeweler, an audiologist, an independent insurer, a pub, a gardening store, a glassmaker, a theater, a brewer, a computer repair shop, and so on.
My hometown of 40,000 has five; one which replaced the only movie theater in the county (a one-hour radius) that closed at the end of 2020. The local government remarked the car wash will provide jobs. Three employees are needed, according to the "local" news. (Actually, the local newspapers were replaced years ago by a nationwide chain of "independent, regional" news sourcers.)
I'm glad I got away from that place. The most fun you could have on a Friday night was meeting friends at Walmart and then driving to an empty parking lot.
Just one of those things takes up the space of 3 or 4 normal gas stations.
The crazy thing is that after a small wave of initial enthusiasm, they hardly ever even have customers.