The car wash sits in Salina. The land it wants sits in Clay. Two towns, two boards and two county referrals later, the plan calls for a 1,679 square foot prep hut at a setback where code requires almost four times the distance.
A car wash on Brewerton Road wants to get bigger, and the only direction it can grow is into the next town.
This story came from public records we pulled ourselves
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The existing Delta Sonic at 3720 Brewerton Road sits in the Town of Salina, hard against the municipal boundary with the Town of Clay. The parcel it wants to absorb is on the Clay side.
That geography is why this ordinary commercial expansion has generated two separate county referrals from two separate municipalities.
The Onondaga County Planning Board reviewed the Salina side on August 5 as case Z-26-179, a site plan, with a companion area variance filed as Z-26-180. The applicant is James Boglioli. The referring board is the Town of Salina Zoning Board of Appeals. The Clay side came before the county earlier as a special permit referral, case Z-26-158.
What is there now
The existing Delta Sonic facility holds a car detailing building, a fueling station and a convenience store, on a 3.12 acre parcel zoned Highway Commercial with a Motor Vehicle Service Facility Overlay District applied on top.
The car wash drive-thru currently circulates along the South Bay Road frontage before entering the building, which sits along the northern boundary of the Salina parcel. Northern boundary, in this case, means the town line.
County staff describe the setting as a commercialized area between Brewerton Road and South Bay Road.
The Clay parcel to the north currently contains a portion of a small commercial plaza. Under the plan, that plaza portion is demolished to allow the Delta Sonic facility to expand into the space.
What gets built, town by town
The site and pavement marking plan is dated April 15, 2026, and it splits neatly along the municipal line.
On the Salina side, the renovation installs new concrete in the drive-thru lanes, adds a 1,679 square foot prep hut in front of the detail shop, and puts a concrete parking area in front of the main entrance. An asphalt parking area goes in adjacent to the drive-thru lanes, and an asphalt driving lane and parking area is reinstalled along the northern parcel boundary.
On the Clay side, concrete goes in across the site. Vacuum stations line the northern parcel boundary. A drying station area occupies the center of the parcel. A new dumpster enclosure and a vacuum motor area go along the eastern boundary.
Then the sentence that makes the two halves one facility: new concrete will be installed to connect the two parcels along the Brewerton Road frontage, across the municipal boundary.
When it is finished, a customer will drive from Salina into Clay without any indication that anything has changed except the pavement joint.
The setback the variance asks for
The area variance is the sharpest number in the file.
The applicant requests a variance to allow the proposed prep hut to sit 3.9 feet from the South Bay Road right of way, where a minimum of 15 feet is required.
That is a reduction of more than 11 feet, leaving a structure just under four feet off the right of way line on a county road.
The county planning board’s response to that specific request is worth quoting for what it does not say. The board has No Position regarding the requested variance.
No Position is a real category in county review, distinct from approval or objection. It means the county declined to weigh in, treating the setback as a purely local matter for the Salina zoning board of appeals to judge on its own statutory criteria.
The board did attach requirements about the expansion generally, which is why the referral is not simply a shrug.
What the county did require
On the site plan, the board recommended modifications.
The first is the state highway department. NYSDOT requires the applicant to submit plans and coordinate Brewerton Road access with the department. To further meet department requirements, the applicant must submit a copy of the Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan and the lighting plan to the department for review. The town must ensure any mitigation the department determines appears on the project plans.
A lighting plan is an unusual thing for a highway department to ask for, and it makes sense here. Vacuum stations and drying areas run at night, and the site fronts a state highway. Glare toward moving traffic is a safety question, not an aesthetic one.
The second modification involves the county’s Department of Water Environment Protection, which sets requirements tied to the project’s effect on county sewer infrastructure.
On the variance referral, the board issued no significant implications, took No Position on the setback itself, and repeated the NYSDOT requirement as a comment.
The access changes
The Salina parcel keeps what it has: an entrance-only driveway and a full-access driveway from Brewerton Road, plus a full-access driveway from South Bay Road. No changes are proposed there.
The Clay parcel changes materially. It currently has unrestricted access to Brewerton Road. Under the plan that would be narrowed to an exit-only driveway at the northwest corner of the site.
That is a real improvement in traffic terms. An unrestricted commercial curb cut on a state highway is the kind of thing highway departments spend years trying to eliminate. Converting it to a single exit-only movement removes conflicting turns across traffic.
Two standing advisories attach. All existing or proposed driveways on Brewerton Road must meet NYSDOT requirements. And any proposed work within the state right of way requires a work permit from NYSDOT.
What the overlay district is doing there
The Salina parcel carries two zoning designations at once: Highway Commercial, and a Motor Vehicle Service Facility Overlay District layered on top.
An overlay district does not replace the underlying zoning. It adds a second set of rules that apply only to a defined category of use within a defined area. In this case the category is motor vehicle service, which covers exactly what is on this corner: fueling, washing, detailing.
Towns use overlays like this to concentrate a use rather than scatter it. Vehicle service businesses bring specific effects, including fluids, noise, lighting, queueing and heavy turning movements, and a town would rather manage them along a highway strip than address them one variance at a time across the whole municipality.
That is relevant to how the setback variance should be read. A prep hut at 3.9 feet from a county road right of way is a substantial deviation, but it is being requested inside a district the town already designated for this kind of use, on a parcel already operating as one. The zoning board’s judgment is about the distance, not about whether a car wash belongs there.
Why noise and light are the neighbors’ questions
Vacuum stations and drying equipment are the two loudest components of a modern car wash, and both are being added on the Clay parcel.
Vacuum stations line the northern boundary. The vacuum motor area, which is where the actual suction equipment lives rather than the hoses customers use, goes along the eastern boundary next to the dumpster enclosure. A drying station area occupies the center.
That layout puts the mechanical noise sources on the outer edges of the Clay parcel rather than in its interior. Whether that matters depends entirely on what abuts those boundaries, which the county file does not describe for the Clay side in detail.
The lighting plan requirement is the more unusual condition, and it is the one to watch. NYSDOT asked for it specifically, alongside the stormwater plan. Highway departments request lighting plans when a site’s illumination could reach the travel lanes. A car wash operating into the evening, with concrete surfaces that reflect well and equipment areas that need to be lit for safety, is a plausible source of that.
For anyone who lives near this corner, the lighting plan and the stormwater plan are both documents that will exist and both will be public. They are worth asking the town for rather than waiting to see the result.
The pattern on Brewerton Road
This is the second Brewerton Road proposal CNY Signal has covered from the county’s August 5 meeting.
The other, in Cicero further north, is a drive-thru coffee shop on the same state route. Both projects front Route 11. Both drew the same first modification, requiring the applicant to coordinate access with NYSDOT.
That repetition is the story of Brewerton Road itself. It is a state highway carrying commercial development along most of its length through northern Onondaga County, and every new curb cut, every added queue and every lighting decision is being negotiated one parcel at a time between a private applicant, a town board and a state highway department that has no vote on the land use.
The county referral is the only place where those threads appear in a single public document.
What the county already told them, in the earlier referral
The Clay side of this project came to the county first, as special permit referral Z-26-158, and the board’s advice then reads like a preview.
It advised the applicant to coordinate with NYSDOT regarding Brewerton Road access. It noted that because the site sits in a county drainage district, the applicant should submit a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan or drainage plan to the county Department of Water Environment Protection. And it encouraged the applicant and the town to consider installing sidewalks along both the Brewerton Road and South Bay Road frontages.
Two of those three came back in August as binding modifications on the Salina side. The sidewalk suggestion did not.
That is worth noting plainly. A commercial corner at the intersection of a state highway and a county road, being substantially rebuilt, with a county recommendation on the record encouraging sidewalks, and no sidewalks in the modifications. If sidewalks happen here, it will be because Salina or Clay requires them, not because the county did.
Two towns, one decision each
The structural oddity of this project is that no single board sees all of it.
Salina’s zoning board of appeals handles the site plan and the setback variance on the Salina parcel. Clay handles the special permit on the Clay parcel. The county saw both, months apart, as separate cases.
The customer experience will be one continuous car wash. The approval process is two municipalities applying two codes to two halves of it.
That is not a criticism of either town. It is how municipal boundaries work, and it is exactly the situation General Municipal Law Section 239 review is designed to catch, which is why this project was referred to the county at all: the site sits within 500 feet of Brewerton Road, a state road, South Bay Road, a county road, and the municipal boundary between Salina and Clay.
The county’s August 5 minutes, including both resolutions and the full staff report described here, are posted by the Onondaga County Department of Planning.
