The owners of Geaux Clean Car Wash have purchased a vacant tract on Corporate Boulevard—near College Drive and adjacent to a Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers restaurant—with plans to develop their seventh express car wash location on the site.
In a deal that closed Monday, Geaux Clean paid $1.18 million for the 45,600-square foot property, or $26 per square foot. Broker Mark Hebert of Kurz and Hebert Commercial Real Estate, who handled the transaction, says the buyers also acquired a right of way behind the property to develop a new roadway that will connect the car wash to Bankers Avenue so customers can enter and exit from two directions.
“The right of way will go behind the Waffle House (on College Drive), which will give better circulation for the car wash and the Raising Cane’s,” Hebert says. “It’s really designed for high volume the way they’ve set it up.”
Geaux Clean acquired the property from its longtime owners, Giovanni Muccicciaro and members of the Salvaggio family, who bought it in 2006 for about $16 per square foot, Hebert says. At the time, the property was the site of an aging Howard Johnson’s motel, which they tore down. They went on to develop the Raising Cane’s restaurant in a build-to-suit arrangement and continue to lease the property to the restaurant chain but were never able to sell or lease the smaller parcel until now.
They retain ownership of a 1.1-acre tract on the site that is still available for development.
At $26 per square feet, the Corporate Boulevard property is the most Geaux Clean has paid for raw dirt for one of its sites. But the company is rapidly expanding in the market and the heavily traveled Corporate Boulevard is a prime location, Hebert says.
