DALLAS — According to www.dallasnews.com, the Dallas Board of Adjustment voted unanimously to declare that a carwash has an “adverse effect” on the area, all but forcing the carwash to shut down.

As reported earlier by Professional Carwashing & Detailing, Jim’s Car Wash, a 24-hour self-serve located on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, has long been blamed for attracting crime in the area.

The owner, Dale Davenport, however, claimed that he has been the victim of a “witch hunt” instigated by City Hall for years, the article continued.

At the hearing on March 20th, City Councilman Kevin Felder, who opposes the carwash, said that the people who live nearby are tired of the “miscreant behavior at the carwash.”

“The surrounding community has made it clear to me that they want this carwash gone,” Felder said.

Warren Norred, the attorney for Davenport, said after the hearing that the board “clearly made its decision based on something other than the relevant evidence.”

Davenport and Norred plan to file a lawsuit, the article noted.

However, if the board’s decision holds, Davenport will still keep the property — he simply would not be able to operate a carwash on it.

Both sides called witnesses to the stand, one of whom was Kedric McKnight, a former federal law enforcement agent who now works at St. Philip’s School about a mile from the carwash, the article added.

McKnight said he personally saw people soliciting sex and purchasing drugs while undercover at the property and asked the board to shut the wash down, the article noted.

“The children in the area, the residents in the area, deserve the opportunity to live in a clean, sanitary, enriched, law-abiding community,” he said.

However, Sky Miller, a Dallas real estate broker and another witness, said the city has “far worse issues” just around the corner from the lot in question, the article noted.

“I believe [in] letting a bustling business that has been around for decades provide those services to its community,” he said.

Another witness, Patti Priesing, who has known Davenport for years, said that he was not responsible for the crime in the area, because those same issues affect every other part of the city, the article continued.

“Everywhere you go, you can find people loitering, laying down, sleeping. So the pictures of them doing this at the carwash — [Davenport] calls [police] all the time about this,” Priesing said.

The Board of Adjustment still must decide on a deadline for Davenport to bring his property into zoning compliance at a later hearing, meaning Davenport will either have to shut down the carwash or operate a conforming business, the article noted.

While Davenport could apply for a specific use permit, he said he was not interested in pursuing that path, the article concluded.

Read the original story here.