Detail Doctor the Right Prescription for Local Car Owners (The Doctor is In)

In 1999, enterprising auto detailer Shawn Gatta was navigating New Jersey state Route 35 in Monmouth County when he noticed a woman tacking up a “for sale” sign on an abandoned ExxonMobil gas station. Not far from the curb, the station sat on a lot in the borough of Shrewsbury, which is nestled a few miles inland from the Jersey Shore and about an hour’s drive south of the New York megalopolis.

No one would have blamed Gatta if he had continued driving without giving the property a second thought. After all, he operated a successful detail business in a 3,000-square-foot facility in nearby Little Silver, N.J. But the car-care entrepreneur, who had been optimizing autos since he was 12 and making money doing it since he was 15, desired a better location with enough property to expand.

He imagined having his automotive business on this major thoroughfare, which provides a toll-free alternative to the congested Garden State Parkway. He didn’t pull over, but he did start to envision a new home for his business. He quickly memorized the phone number that would lead him down the path of risk and reward which has significantly changed the complexity of his business.

“I came to find out it had been vacant for 15 years,” Gatta recalls, rather incredulously, about the station. “A full acre, on the highway.” At Exxon’s request, Gatta sent a letter of intent, along with an offer.

Today, the former gas station has grown into one of the most successful detail businesses in the state. In its affluent habitat, The Detail Doctor caters to everything from classy sedans of successful professionals to the sports cars of some of New Jersey’s native big-name entertainers. Post-expansion, the business spans 6,000 square feet, has a 14-person staff, can detail up to 12 cars at the same time and features a drive-through hand-wash bay. But the process to get it this far required an enormous investment of time and money, about $1.2 million, according to Gatta.

“By early 2000, I was in fully executed contracts to buy this property with money that I had saved,” Gatta, 39, explains. “It was nothing that was given to me ... This was money that was earned from detailing cars from day one.”

As a teenager, Gatta went door to door along oceanfront property asking people if they would like their cars washed, waxed and cleaned. Before long, word spread that this kid could really make a car stand out.

Working out of the trunk of his 1976 Plymouth Valiant, Gatta employed a couple of his friends. His acumen for business and cars soon enabled him to acquire a struggling detail business in 1987, which he revived and named “The Detail Doctor.”

Even though he had built a reputable business in Little Silver, the potential he saw in the old gas station inspired Gatta to throw all of his chips into the pot. He picked up the deed for what he says was “a very fair price, but it was a lot to me at the time. I lost a lot of sleep over it.”

Because the site once had gas pumps in the ground, Gatta had to spend $190,000 in simple renovations just to make it environmentally compliant. New Jersey law requires owners of old gas stations to obtain a “No Further Action” letter confirming that the ground is “clean,” or free of petroleum remnants.

Additional hurdles came from local government. The property was zoned “automotive” when the gas station was doing business years earlier, but by the time Gatta acquired the property from ExxonMobil, Shrewsbury had rezoned it for general retail. Given the upper-class surroundings, it seemed that Shrewsbury residents preferred something more corporate than a car-care facility and envisioned either up-scale shopping or a bank.

Nevertheless, Gatta was determined, and he managed to get the zoning turned back from retail to automotive. The process took four months to finalize since the zoning meetings in his borough meet just once per month, but ultimately Gatta’s patience and diligence were rewarded.

“No one could foresee the hurdles we were going to face,” he notes. The environmental renovations and rezoning took two years to complete, but Gatta opened the new Detail Doctor on May 20, 2002.

“It was a three-bed garage, 1,700 square feet — a typical gas station,” Gatta recalls. Right away, however, the