Times Union13%
Bethlehem car wash to permanently close as company seeks other town location 28%
By Patrick Tine24%
8/3/2026, 11:48:32 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 13 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Availability Heuristic, and Representativeness Heuristic, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 18.5% saturation with 79 hits. Analysis detected 405 faulty-reasoning hits from 428 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 32.8% and a BS Rank of 28% (20,421 of 28,358 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 72.00% of the article peer group.
BETHLEHEM — The Hoffman Car Wash on Delaware Avenue that has been closed over concerns that the hill above the Normans Kill where it is located could give way will not reopen.
CEO Tom Hoffman Jr. said Monday that while the company had an engineering plan that would have shored up the location at 55 Delaware Ave., the cost of implementing it would have been unfeasible.
The company was looking for a different site in Bethlehem to open another car wash.
The town ordered the car wash to close in mid-October after a 23-foot-long crack emerged at the site.
At the time, the town described the situation as an “imminent threat to public safety” and warned that “portions of the slope on the property (were) actively moving,” according to an assessment conducted by the town’s engineer.
News that the car wash, which also housed a Jiffy Lube, would not be reopening was first reported by Spotlight News.
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Land on the hillside has given way before.
In May of 2000, 400 linear feet of earth, trees and shrubs detached from a rain-saturated hill behind a farm stand in Bethlehem and fell to the ravine below.
The slide destroyed Anthony Battaglia’s Delaware Avenue vegetable stand, the California Produce Marketplace.
The main route to Albany from Bethlehem was severed, and the 18,000 to 19,000 motorists who travel each day between Albany and Bethlehem on Delaware Avenue were forced to take alternate routes — more than doubling their commuting time in some cases.
Tons of dirt and vegetation fell on the Normans Kill Creek, damming a 90-foot-wide and 200-to-300-foot-long section of its waters.
The six-month repair and cleanup cost more than $25 million.
In 2012, more erosion was noted at the location, and a geologist at the time told the Times Union: “Given the track record that about every 10, 11 years there is a landslide in that area, a significant landslide could take place.”
In 2015, another massive slide brought down a section of slope near the Normanside Country Club in Bethlehem.
It blocked a length of the Normans Kill, more than two football fields long.
Hoffman said that the historic rain that pummeled the region last week did not impact the site or influence his company’s decision not to reopen.
“We weren’t concerned,” he said.
“It rains a lot in upstate New York.”
Speakers
1speaker17%attributed speech356writer words
Selected voice
53%flagged-word coverageTom Hoffman Jr.
72 attributed words100% of attributed speech54% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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