After new owners of three Austin Genie Car Wash locations recently decided to leave their iconic neon signs as they are, the owner of the first Genie location in Waco said he has no plans to make changes to his sign.

The sign with an earring-sporting genie, at 916 N. Valley Mills Drive, has been there since the carwash opened in 1964, and people wouldn’t want to see it changed or removed, said Kyle Nielsen, owner of the two full-service Genies in Waco. The other location at 915 N. Hewitt Drive opened in 1994, Nielsen said.

“I can tell you people put a value on it,” Nielsen said of the sign on Valley Mills.

The genie in this sign has looked over North Valley Mills Drive since 1964 and marks the first Genie Car Wash location.
Duane A. Laverty photo

These days, the Waco businesses carry the full name of Genie Car Wash & Fast Lube. The Genie self-serve carwashes have another owner, Nielsen said.

The paint on the Waco sign is in rough shape, but the neon still lights up, Nielsen said. Work often has to be done to keep it going, he said. It’s common to drop $1,500 on a repair job for the sign, he said.

A partnership that purchased the three Austin Genies on Dec. 1 from Mace Security of Philadelphia was considering what to do with the signs after the transaction was complete.

Options included altering the landmark signs to display the name of the new owner, H2O Car Express, said Jason Marshall, one of the Austin partners. Comments from Austin residents led to a decision that the signs, including one that’s been on Burnet Road since 1968, will stay as they are, Marshall said.

The Waco Genies and the Austin businesses were once owned by one firm but are no longer affiliated.

A Waco man, Newman Copeland, started the Genie company, and partner John Gabbert joined him shortly after its conception. They opened the first Genie on North Valley Mills on Feb. 23, 1964. Copeland said the original sign cost $23,000. Nielsen said it would cost more than $100,000 to reproduce the sign today.

“The sign was kind of copied off of Mr. Clean. We put a turban on him,” Copeland said.

Genie grew into a chain of five full-serve carwashes in the two cities and a group of self-serve locations before being broken up as ownership changed through the years. The three full-serve Austin locations were built between 1968 and 1987, Marshall said.

Although the self-serve spots, Waco full-serve locations and Austin carwashes are separate, nobody seems concerned that they still use the Genie name, Copeland said. Changing that would be expensive.

“Everybody was always too tight to change them,” he said.

bteeter@wacotrib.com

757-5734