Overview:
The site of the Bonnie and Clyde filling station in West Dallas, which was demolished in 2022, is set to be repurposed as a car wash. Frank Nuchereno, the owner of three Hello! Deluxe Car Wash locations, purchased the vacant lot and plans to have a replica of an old Bonnie and Clyde car. The site will also feature a large mural on the building's exterior and hire people within the community. The top concern of Los Altos residents is how cars waiting to be washed may affect traffic and whether neighbors are able to travel to and from their homes.
A plot of land on Singleton and Winnetka in West Dallas has serviced vehicles since the 1930s. It was once the childhood home of the infamous Clyde Barrow and a filling station owned by his family, until a developer legally but controversially demolished the structure in 2022.
Now the site is being prepped to service vehicles once again — this time as a car wash.
Frank Nuchereno, the owner of three Hello! Deluxe Car Wash locations across DFW, purchased the vacant lot to set up his fourth location.
“Where the filling station home was, we plan on having a replica of an old Bonnie and Clyde car,” Nuchereno says. “We’re going to recognize the historical significance and have a plaque telling people that this is where the home used to be.”
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, who met in West Dallas, were known for their sprawling crime sprees of bank robberies, murders and other unlawful activities across Texas and other states. The couple’s story remains a prominent staple of Dallas history, and a debate over whether and how that history should be preserved has long raged in Dallas and beyond.
Barrow’s childhood home remained standing for decades amid this argument, and in 2019 the lot was purchased by Brent Jackson and his real estate company Oaxaca Interests. Jackson planned to demolish the home but was met with pushback from Bonnie and Clyde aficionados and the preservation community, who urged a landmark designation to preserve the history the structure carries.
“That history should not be celebrated. He did murder a number of first responders,” Jackson told the Landmark Commission, which calls the shots on the City’s historic structures and districts. “The guy murdered multiple, multiple, multiple people.”
Another West Dallas site connected to Bonnie and Clyde’s history was the Lillie McBride House, notable as being the place where Clyde fatally shot Tarrant County Deputy Sheriff Malcolm Davis in 1933. Both the McBride house and the Barrow filling station ultimately failed to be designated as historic landmarks.
Wesley-Rankin Community Center owns the land where the McBride House stood and relocated the house to Tyler, Texas, in spring 2023 at the request of Bonnie and Clyde’s living descendants. In contrast, Jackson waited out the Landmark Commission’s hold on the Barrow filling station property then quietly filed a demolition order in April 2022 that the City granted.
Nuchereno purchased the vacant lot from Jackson later that year, along with three others Jackson had purchased in 2019 — the longstanding West Dallas Pharmacy next to the Barrows’ former filling station, Chuyitas Taqueria and a tire shop. A fifth lot Nuchereno purchased in 2022 was owned by HMK Ltd, the former owner of more than 300 rental homes sold in 2016, mainly in the Los Altos neighborhood adjacent to the filling station.
Nuchereno did not need a zoning change from the City to construct the car wash; the lots already were zoned for commercial retail. According to the Dallas Central Appraisal District, his acre of land is worth $1,097,970 now, up from $793,420 when he purchased the five lots in 2022, and from $489,870 when Jackson and HMK owned them in 2019.
Construction for the incoming car wash began a month ago, says Nuchereno, after three years of demolitions slowed down by the need for asbestos removal from buildings like the West Dallas Pharmacy. He says he planned to reuse the pharmacy’s iconic neon sign within the West Dallas car wash design, but someone stole it.
Nuchereno says he hopes to open the new Singleton car wash in August 2025, and plans to engage Los Altos neighbors by commissioning a large mural on the building’s exterior and hiring people within the community, especially those who live within walking distance.
“I’m not for tearing things down and starting over,” Nuchereno says. “There’s historical significance here, and throughout history we learn from both the positive and negative parts of it. It’s a shame seeing people tear everything down.”
The top concern Dallas Free Press is hearing from Los Altos residents at this point is how cars waiting to be washed may affect traffic and whether neighbors are able to travel to and from their homes. At Nuchereno’s Kessler Park location, the line can stretch for blocks.
Nuchereno tells us he is cognizant of the need to be a good neighbor.
“As someone who’s been around the Vickery Meadow neighborhood for years, I know that you have to respect the people that are there,” he says. “Real estate people can’t just come in and push people out to make a profit.”
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