Approvals for new car washes and storage facilities in Punta Gorda will be put on pause for a period of 180 days during a moratorium begininng after the next City Council meeting Feb. 19.

Council voted 4-1 on Feb. 5 to review current zoning for car washes and storage facilities and implement criteria adopted by city of Cape Coral.

“We are going to implement much of what they did,” Vice Mayor Greg Julian said.

The moratorium provides the city time to review its regulations and establish criteria for those businesses.

Julian said Council decided to take a closer look at its current regulations after a zoning official approved a storage facility on U.S. 41 in an area not zoned for it. When council members became aware of it, they decided approvals would be made by the governing body.

Maps indicating current car wash and storage facility locations and areas where zoning allows new ones were included in Council’s agenda packet in addition to city of Cape Coral’s amended changes. One of the first steps Cape Coral took was changing car wash and storage facilities to Conditional Permitted Uses in certain zoning districts.

For car washes, location requirements include a minimum separation distance between uses of 1 mile and only on parcels having primary frontage on certain roadways. The facilities are to be located at least 500 feet away from any major intersection involving collector and/or arterial roadways, and all systems and equipment must be completely enclosed within a building.

For self-storage facilities, Cape Coral created specific regulations regarding location requirements, required enclosure, landscaping, building and site aesthetics, hours of access and other mandates.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of storage facilities and car washes built throughout Charlotte County.

In addition to self-storage units, those housing large vehicles, such as trailers and recreational vehicles, cropped up, with many along Taylor Road.

There are both enclosed and open-area storage facilities for large vehicles.

Deed restrictions prohibit keeping RVs parked in driveways in certain communities, such as Punta Gorda Isles, and most residential garages are not large enough to accommodate those types of vehicles.

During the pandemic, the sales of RVs increased. Around the same time, new large vehicle storage facilities were developed in the city and county.