Riverside Express Carwash (Van Buren)

The Riverside Express Car Wash and retail development is located on a four-acre site across the street from the Riverside Municipal Airport, along Van Buren Boulevard, a City-designated parkway that crosses the Santa Ana River and the northern city limit. The proposed development envisions a high quality built environment with an express car wash on the north half of the property and multi-tenant retail on the south.

The architectural forms of the buildings reference the performance shapes of airplanes and cars. The azure blue color of primary architectural features such as the metal panels of the carwash butterfly roof, the folded roofs and walls of the retail buildings is used to unify all of the Project’s built forms.

The buildings are organized around two “courtyards”, a direct reference to the City of Riverside’s architectural connection to the Mission Revival Style movement. The south courtyard is populated with rows of olive trees, shading the retail parking area and recalling Riverside’s agricultural past. The north courtyard mimics the tree canopies with metal shading canopies, protecting the vacuum stations of the carwash, from the bright low desert sunlight.