You might know this place as LA Auto Spa

Same three bays, same spot on Mayor Magrath Drive North. New name, new owners, and a great deal of new equipment behind the walls.

Same bays, same corner

For years this was LA Auto Spa, at 108 Mayor Magrath Drive North. Then it closed, and sat.

It has reopened as AK Auto Spa. If you used to wash your car here, you already know exactly where you are going — the building and the three bays are the same ones.

What actually changed

The parts you can see: the bays are heated, with automatic doors that open as you arrive and close behind you, a pause button that stops the clock for 30 seconds up to three times a wash, and hand-painted murals on the bay walls instead of bare concrete.

The parts you cannot: a water softener ahead of the pumps, heated water and heated chemicals, a reverse-osmosis spot-free rinse, and new controls on every bay.

The price is a flat $1.00 per minute, and it is open 24 hours.

Why reopen a closed car wash

A self-serve bay is mostly plumbing, concrete and three-phase power, and none of that had gone anywhere. What had gone was everything that makes the difference between a bay somebody uses twice and one they come back to: heat, water treatment, working doors and controls that do not fight you.

So the building stayed and the inside did not. It is a cheaper and considerably less wasteful way to get a good car wash onto Mayor Magrath than putting up a new one two blocks away, and it means the location people already know is the location that works.

If you are looking for the old listing

Old directory entries, map pins and reviews under the name LA Auto Spa refer to this same address. It is one business with a new name, not a different one down the road.

The phone number is (587) 394-2195, and somebody gets the message.

Finding it

108 Mayor Magrath Drive North, on Lethbridge's busiest north-south road, in the corridor where Highways 3, 4 and 5 meet. Easy in and easy out, on the way to wherever you were already going.

Three bays, all identical, all heated, open 24 hours a day including holidays.

Questions people ask