Silverstar Car Wash opening Minnesota Ave. location despite resistant neighbors

Story courtesy of Sioux Falls Argus Leader

A new business is coming to central Sioux Falls.

But don’t expect the neighborhood to throw a house-warming party.

Silverstar Car Wash is expanding its footprint in the community with plans to add an eighth location and establish its headquarters and a training center at the former Vern Eide Tint and Recon Center at 1500 S. Minnesota Avenue.

But due to the location’s proximity to residential homes, the company first needed a special permit from City Hall. The Sioux Falls Planning Commission earlier this year approved the conditional use permit application for Silverstar Car Wash, but neighbors in opposition petitioned the Sioux Falls City Council to intervene.

“You guys are probably at the end of the road for us. You’re our last hope,” neighborhood homeowner Jason Madsen said Tuesday night urging councilors to reject the conditional use permit.

Madsen and a half dozen other residents in the 24th Street and Dakota Avenue area voiced concerns about a car wash bringing an uptick in traffic on residential streets east of Minnesota Avenue, noise pollution and a drag on property values.

But Tom Borchard, who also lives in the neighborhood, spoke in favor of the project, saying that a car wash won’t hinder the quality of life for homeowners in the area in the same way that most other businesses suited for a high-trafficked corridor of town might.

Before Silverstar Car Wash was announced as a potential buyer of the property, he said he worried it would become a strip mall.

“My biggest concern is if not Silverstar, then what?” he said. “I think you could have a lot worse thing. … We know every single strip mall in town has a liquor store and a vape shop in it.”

Ryan Tysdal, the Van Buskirk Companies realtor managing the deal between Silverstar Car Wash’s parent company, Midwest Fidelity Partners, and Vern Eide, echoed Borchard’s sentiment. Several other businesses that had eyed the property would likely have drawn more resistance from the neighborhood than a car wash has, he said.

“Compared to the other potential buyers we had and the other alternative uses the property could become, Silverstar is the most preferred user with the least impact on the neighborhood,” he said, adding that many of those other uses wouldn’t have needed a conditional use permit.

Councilors voted 6-2 to affirm the conditional use permit, which stipulates buffer yards to separate the car wash campus from adjacent residential homes. A condition that noise levels don’t exceed 60 decibels is also included in the list of conditions.