Cotati planning commission approves Love Car Wash design with color and tree conditions

The Cotati Planning Commission voted to approve preliminary and final design review for a proposed Love Car Wash at 7360 Commerce Boulevard, adopting conditions that reduce the proposed pink façade to a white band and require 25-gallon crepe myrtle trees in the eastern landscape island.

Staff said the project covers slightly more than a half-acre adjacent to the Laguna de Santa Rosa trail and would replace an existing, legally established car-wash operation. Autumn, a community development staff member, told the commission the proposal includes demolition of an old fuel canopy, a new pay station, relocation of existing vacuum equipment, slurry sealing and new striping, and extended landscaping to the north property edge. Staff concluded the project is exempt from CEQA as a minor modification consistent with the city’s 2015 general plan EIR and recommended approval with conditions tied to building-permit benchmarks.

The applicant, architect Jonathan Ramos, said much of the work is an equipment replacement: “This building is roughly from 1950…we are replacing the conveyor,” Ramos said, and…