SIMI VALLEY : Council Approves Ballplayer’s Carwash

After more than a year of planning review and complaints from competing merchants, the Simi Valley City Council has approved construction of a carwash and service station by Philadelphia Phillies baseball player Lenny Dykstra.

The council voted 3 to 1 Monday to uphold a Planning Commission decision that cleared a zoning change and construction plans for Dykstra’s carwash at the southeast corner of Los Angeles Avenue and 1st Street.

But attorneys for Noordin Yusufaly--who owns a carwash just a few hundred yards from the proposed site--protested the plan in a public hearing Monday before the council vote.

Attorney Mitchel Kahn told council members that the new carwash would create too much traffic and noise, and would violate city zoning rules.

Kahn called Dykstra’s plan for the large car-detailing complex, capped with Spanish tile and decorated with pennants, “the Disneyland of carwashes.” He argued that someone--he would not say whether it was city engineers or Dykstra’s development team--played with zoning map lines so that the project needed only a zoning change, rather than a more complex General Plan amendment.

And Kahn said that putting another carwash so close to Yusufaly’s would jeopardize business for both.

But attorneys and engineers for Dykstra and co-developer Lindsay Jones argued that the traffic and noise projected for the carwash all comply with city laws.

Attorney Ken Rodman said that his clients “followed to the letter what the Planning Commission has recommended.”

And the council members agreed--except for Councilwoman Barbara Williamson.

She voted against upholding the Planning Commission’s approval, citing the apparent change in zoning boundaries. “We have some rules that were not meant to be bent,” she said.