Car wash looks to clean up by replacing these dead businesses on key Tinton Falls corner

Posted by author February 24, 2025 Fitness

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Spark Car Wash hopes to open its Tinton Falls store in the first half of next year.
The chain already has seven other locations, including one in Lacey.
Five more are planned in New Jersey, including Berkeley.

TINTON FALLS — Construction fencing has gone up around the vacant Burger King and fitness club at the corner of Newman Springs Road and Shrewsbury Avenue.

Spark Car Wash, the contract purchaser of the property, will demolish the two vacant buildings and construct a 5,900-square-foot car wash, according to plans approved last month by the township Planning Board.

It is estimated to open in the first half of 2026, a company spokesperson told What’s Going There.

Spark, an express car wash, touts its high-tech car wash tunnel, which uses cameras and scales to adjust the brushes and other equipment to the shape of your car to clean the exterior while you remain inside your vehicle.

Founded in 2018 by CEO Kyle Van Decker, Summit-based Spark Car Wash has seven locations with six New Jersey car washes, including one in Lacey. The seventh location is in Folsom, Pennsylvania.

“We noticed that there were a lot of these modern car washes sprouting up around the country, but we really didn’t have a lot in this market,” said Kacy Erdelyi, a spokesperson for Spark Car Wash. “He saw an opportunity to start a business.”

The first locations were conversions of existing car washes. Now Spark is building from the ground up, Erdelyi said. Besides Tinton Falls, among the other planned locations in New Jersey are in Berkeley, Linden, Piscataway, North Brunswick and Wayne.

The company is developing locations in New Jersey, southern New York and Long Island and eastern Pennsylvania.

In Tinton Falls, two vacant buildings — a former Burger King restaurant, which closed in the fall of 2020, and the former Evolve Training & Fitness — sit on the property which will become Spark Car Wash.

In its resolution approving the project, the Planning Board said the Spark Car Wash is a “substantial improvement” to the property both aesthetically and for the safety of commuters on Newman Springs Road and Shrewsbury Avenue.

The vacant fitness center building, which is on the corner, is a visual impediment to cars turning from Shrewsbury Avenue onto Newman Springs Road and from Newman Springs Road to Shrewsbury Avenue, the resolution states.

The new car wash will have 23 self-vacuuming spaces. Erdelyi said Spark Car Wash also provides customers with microfiber towels and glass cleaner and a way to clean floor mats.

“You can basically get your whole car on the inside clean in like 10 minutes,” she said. Spark also offers memberships for unlimited car washes.

David P. Willis, an award-winning business writer, has covered business, retail, real estate and consumer news at the Asbury Park Press for 27 years. He writes APP.com’s What’s Going There column and can be reached at dwillis@gannettnj.com. Please sign up for his weekly newsletter and join his What’s Going There page on Facebook for updates.