Car Wash

After 16 months of fighting, Albert J. Granato Jr. and Sam Fiorvanti have come to terms over Fiorvanti's plans to improve his gas station in Upper Moreland. The property is next door to Granato's home. Fiorvanti originally wanted to add a car wash to the site at 2800 Easton Rd. He won approval for the facility from the Upper Moreland Zoning Hearing Board in October 1986. But Granato filed an appeal, claiming that the car wash would create too much traffic and noise in the neighborhood.

Everyone who has ever owned an automobile has probably taken it through a car wash at least once. Automatic car washes have proliferated in this country since the end of World War II, and although some car owners go to the car wash only once a year, others never miss a week. Unlike some in California, who regard having a clean car as an almost religious experience, car owners in the Northeast are mainly interested in the practical aspects - clearing off the slush, snow, salt and accumulated grime in winter and the bugs and dirt in summer.

Steve Okun wears a white lab coat. He refers to his office as an emergency room and lays his tools - popsicle sticks, makeup brushes - out on a hospital cart. He is a specialist, and his patients are mostly British, German and Japanese, with a few Americans. But Okun is no doctor. He and his brother, Jeff, who dresses in similar fashion, run a carwash. Theirs is not an ordinary carwash, however - it is an auto appearance salon. The brothers, who hail from Allentown, have taken over an old flea market in Manayunk and created what they call a "health spa for your car. " They offer a list of services in the form of a menu, with the least expensive course being an $18 hand wash known as "Steve's Concours d'Elegance.

A Horsham car wash company and three of its managers have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government, harbor illegal immigrants, and commit identity theft. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia said Car Care managers operated a scheme between 2000 and March 2006 that allowed car washes to hire illegal workers by giving them false names and a way to cash their checks at local banks without identification. The banks were given a list of employees who were authorized to cash paychecks without showing identification other than clothing bearing the company logo.

The Willistown Planning Commission has conditionally recommended that the Board of Supervisors approve a plan for a gas station and car wash on King Road. The developer, Reinhard Bets, submitted the revised plan Wednesday night. It provides for two entrances on King Road and drops a proposal for an entrance on Lloyd Avenue. The Lloyd Avenue entrance was scrapped by the developer because neighbors complained at a meeting in December that it would bring commercial traffic to a residential street.

Sam Fioravanti wants to add a car-wash facility to his gas-station business on Easton Road, but his neighbor objects to the noise and traffic that it could create. The neighbor, Albert J. Granato Jr., has appealed the Oct. 9 decision of the Upper Moreland Zoning Hearing Board, which granted Fioravanti a special exception and variance to proceed with his plans. Fioravanti contends that the appeal is frivolous and the delay is costing him a "substantial" amount of money in lost earnings and additional construction costs.

About 330 students from Neeta Elementary School and 10 people from nearby businesses were evacuated yesterday when a two-alarm blaze broke out at the Medford Auto Wash. The 90-minute evacuation was ordered to avert an emergency in case the chemicals used at the car wash were released into the air, said Medford Police Sgt. Dan Newman. "There was some concern about hazardous chemicals kept inside the building," but no one was injured, Newman said. Car wash employees reported the fire at 11:39 a.m. when they noticed smoke coming from a storage room of the business at 725 Stokes Rd. Medford Lakes school superintendent Karen Bruner said most of the elementary school students were in a multipurpose room having lunch when police ordered their evacuation.

Despite protests from 15 neighbors and a township commissioner, the Upper Dublin Zoning Hearing Board has granted a special exception to the owner of the Amoco gas station at 2800 Easton Rd. to allow him to build a car wash. At its meeting Thursday night, the board voted unanimously to grant the variance to the owner, Sam Fioravanti. The car wash would be built two feet from the property line. Fioravanti's property is in a commercial zone that abuts a residential area.

The township gave up its fight against a proposed Route 1 car wash after the first round in court, agreeing Tuesday not to appeal a judge's order to grant the developer a conditional use permit. The decision, handed down in Bucks County Court by Judge Susan Devlin Scott on March 14, gives Francis T. Theuer the go-ahead to build a car wash on an old used-car lot just east of Woodbourne Road. The supervisors cited traffic and safety concerns in denying Theuer's conditional use application after a public hearing in 1993.

The Zoning Hearing Board of Upper Merion Township is considering a request from Exxon Corp. to construct a car wash and convenience store at the site of a service station at North Gulph Road and Kirk Avenue. Exxon officials said at a Tuesday night meeting that the gasoline pumps at the site would be replaced and that the new pumps would be protected by a canopy. The service bays would not be replaced, officials said. The area is zoned for commercial uses, but Exxon needs six variances and possibly a special exception from the township for the project, according to township officials.

Question: I'm trying to resolve an issue with Alamo and have not been able to communicate directly with anyone at the claims department. Now they're threatening collections and legal action. I'm in the process of buying a house and can't afford a ding on my credit rating. Here's what happened. I rented a car from Alamo in San Francisco for three days recently. It was parked most of that time and the vehicle was definitely not damaged during my rental. When I arrived in San Francisco, I checked in at the rental Alamo rental desk.

DANCER NICOLE ALVAREZ , a 2000 graduate of the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, was on the witness stand Tuesday in the Conrad Murray trial in L.A. Alvarez is a girlfriend and baby mama of Michael Jackson's controversial doctor, who is on trial for manslaughter in the death of the King of Pop. Alvarez, who met Murray in 2005, when she was working as a stripper in Las Vegas, testified that she had been unaware that...

Greg Rawls was asleep on the floor of a friend's home early Wednesday when a loud banging broke the silence. His girlfriend, who had been lying next to him, opened the door, and members of the U.S. Marshals New York/New Jersey Fugitive Task Force poured in. Roughly 36 hours after authorities say Rawls opened fire on an East Camden corner, missing his target but sending a bullet into 9-year-old Jorge Cartagena's temple - a wound doctors say...

He had been playing basketball in East Camden and was walking home Monday afternoon when the bullets started flying. Jorge Cartagena, a fourth grader, was struck in the eye, collapsed to the ground, and immediately called out for his mother. "Where is my son? Where is my son?" screamed his mother, Isabel, after learning from a neighbor of the 9-year-old's shooting. She rushed from her home on Marlton Avenue toward the shooting scene. She cradled him in her lap and told him "to be strong.

LOS ANGELES - Former Phillies outfielder Lenny Dykstra was arrested for investigation of grand theft, a day after he was charged with a federal bankruptcy crime, authorities said yesterday. Dykstra, 48, was arrested Thursday night by Los Angeles police at his Encino home on suspicion of trying to buy a stolen car, police spokesman Officer Christopher No said. He did not have other details. Dykstra remained jailed last night. He was the centerfielder and centerpiece of the Phillies' unexpected run to the World Series in 1993.

M ARTIN LUTHER KING III and civil-rights icon Andrew Young are among the founders of a digital-TV network that's aimed at African-Americans and is set to launch this fall. According to the Associated Press, Bounce TV has acquired rights to nearly 400 movies, including several Spike Lee films such as "Jungle Fever," "Mo' Better Blues" and "Do the Right Thing"; Denzel Washington headliners like "The Hurricane," "Glory" and "Philadelphia," and "classics" (their word)

They came in thanksgiving and in sadness Saturday to remember Alice and George and so many others, all gone now. Friends and family gathered at St. Vincent de Paul Church in East Germantown to commemorate the dead or disappeared in a ceremony sponsored by Face to Face, a nonprofit social-services group that works out of a large building next to the rectory. Beverly needed help reading her remarks, and Flip struggled to maneuver his scooter to the front of the church to speak. But they spoke eloquently of people such as Alice Renzulli, who died this summer at age 62, having choked during lunch at a mental-health center down the street.

Temple sophomore running back Bernard Pierce was a train passenger yesterday, rolling toward Bristol, Conn., the backwoods home of sports giant ESPN. Pierce was an invited guest and will appear today on about "five or six ESPN entities," according to Temple associate athletic director Larry Dougherty, who also was on the northeast-bound train. The Owls, coming off their first winning season since 1990, started a Heisman Trophy campaign last month for Pierce, who rushed for 1,361 yards in 12 games as a freshman.

A Bucks County jury yesterday convicted Omar Sharif Cash of all 19 counts against him in the kidnapping of a Philadelphia couple, the execution of the boyfriend and the multiple rapes of the girlfriend. The six-man, six-woman jury deliberated for about 6 1/2 hours over two days. Cash, 28, of Kensington, showed no emotion when the jury foreman read "guilty" after "guilty" verdicts. The jury this morning will hear arguments in the trial's penalty phase and will determine if Cash gets life in prison or the death penalty.