Lack of Laundromats Making Hell's Kitchen Desperate & Dirty

Lori Nix's diorama Laundromat at Night

Hell's Kitchen continues to be a highly desirable neighborhood for many New Yorkers, but living in the HeKi (our coinage&msash;you're welcome Corcoran) isn't without sacrifice. Local residents who don't have washer/dryers in their buildings are finding it increasingly annoying to get their laundry done! One of the neighborhood's last laundromats, on 53rd Street and Ninth Avenue, recently closed, leaving behind, the Post reports, "a mile-long, laundry-less desert between Eighth and Tenth Avenues." This heavy news comes on the heels of Second Wave Laundry, the largest Laundromat in the neighborhood on 55th Street and Ninth Avenue, closing because the landlord threatened to raise the rent from $14,000 to $20,000 a month and demanded an $80,000 security deposit.

Now Hell's Kitchen locals are throwing "champagne and laundry parties" in apartments with washing machines. Others simply do their laundry in the sink. For this very reason, Councilwoman Gale Brewer has introduced a resolution to give tax breaks to owner-operated city businesses. "This is the most basic challenge to the crisis of the lack of mom-and-pop stores in the city," says Brewer. "It's beyond frustrating." And Christine Gorman, president of the West 55th Block Association, tells the tabloid, "The Laundromats are fleeing our area. The services in our neighborhood are disappearing. There's rumors that the Laundromat is going to become a Citibank." At least that's welcome news for anybody in Hell's Kitchen who needs some money laundered.

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By John Del Signore in News on January 3, 2011 5:03 PM

Comments [rss]

AhHoon

Ah Hoon say, "Don't blame Chinese for lack of laundromats! We wash white devil smelly underwear for 140 years!"

Kojak1

There's plenty of them when you get further down the kitchen on 9th. Get the fuck up and WALK!

robingee

Boy you have all the answers and everyone else is an idiot, huh? All of these people are just lazy jerks I guess.

Kojak

It's sad, but true.

robingee

Yeah you are.

Ph

Hauling 40-50 pounds of laundry the better part of a mile is a pain in the ass. I mean really, it is.

blindmalice

Why should up and coming neighborhoods have to endure unattractive laundramats when a Starbucks or Bank of America or a Duane Reade could easily pay the new inflated rents. All those down-scale Mom and Pop businesses just make the streets look messy. Next they must get rid of shoe repair shops, dry cleaners, hardware stores, stationery stores, butchers, bakeries. Why cant they just connect all the stores together and put together enough space for a Walmart and a Kohls.
Sad, sad, sad what the Guiliani/Bloomberg regimes have let happen to New York.

robingee

It's happening everywhere.

Communist

Call for pick up or take a cab to one near you. Problem solved.

robingee

It's really expensive to do that every week.

Mr Mel

If the Landlord is looking for an $80,000 security deposit on a $20,000 monthly rental, it is probably because the tenant's payment history is spotty. I had an uncle that had a business that put washers & dryers into apartment house basements. They were coin operated. They still exist in the high rises maybe they can be installed in those Clinton tenements as well. I think the problem was that the machines in the basements were broken into by the junkie residents.