In an emergency meeting, Whalley Avenue neighbors tried to put the brakes on a plan to bring a second branch of a Laundromat chain to the commercial corridor.
“This will be driven to failure,” pronounced Eliezer Greer, after a meeting at the police substation on Whalley Avenue Wednesday night. Greer, an outspoken rabbi best known for establishing an armed citizen’s patrol on Edgewood streets, was one of a small group of neighbors who sat down at a large table with Attorney Tony Avallone to talk about development plans for the area.
Avallone, a smooth-operating former state senator known for his success at working projects through the city zoning board, is representing a tenant who wants to start up a Laundromat next to the new Walgreens at Whalley and the Ella Grasso Boulevard.
Wearing a white checked shirt and brown loafers, Avallone (pictured) set a laid-back tone to the meeting, starting it off at 6:04 p.m. with a joke about grocery stores. The meeting quickly heated up, however.
The site Avallone’s client plans to move into stands on a spot of much contention. A New York developer wrangled with neighbors for over a year before getting city permission to build a new Walgreens there.
On the rest of the plot of land lies a Dunkin’ Donuts and the skeleton of what used to be a dollar store (pictured).
At the time of zoning approval for the Walgreens lot, developers didn’t know what kind of tenant would be moving into the former dollar store. So zoners asked the petitioners to come back to the zoning board when a tenant was chosen, according to Avallone.
Avallone said the landowners have permission for the 3,900-square-foot structure that will stand there. They just have to come back to the board for a parking variance.
The use, a laundry facility with about 40 machines, is permitted on the site. But the plan has rankled some stakeholders in the area.
The proposed tenant is a company called Precision Wash ‘n’ Dry. The company owns a chain of 17 Laundromats in Connecticut and Massachussetts, according to its website. The proposed Laundromat would be open from 6 a.m. to 12 midnight, Avallone said.
“This is not what we need,” fumed Greer Wednesday night. He’s part of a team of activists who have sought to take an active role in shaping development along that corridor, to move away from a strip mall, highway feeling to a more pedestrian-friendly scale.
Greer argued that instead of a bright, neon store open until midnight, the corridor needed a locally-owned shop like a bakery or a florist. He also said there are enough laundromats on Whalley, and bringing a chain in could drive out the Mom and Pop stores. To prove his point, he brought in Kenny Chan.
Kenny Chan, owner of the K‑C Laundromat, showed up with Greer’s card in the breast pocket of a white dress shirt. His shop is just two blocks away from the proposed Laundromat. A Shelton resident, he said he’s done business in the area for 20 years, The quiet man spoke with passionate urgency about what the competition could mean for his family.
Chan said in the nine years he’s had his store at 456 Whalley Ave., he hasn’t upped the prices because he’s afraid of driving customers away.
“Nine years, same price,” he said, in halting English. “I’m too small to compete him,” he said of the chain company threatening to move in on his turf.
“If they put one in here, they’re going to kill my business,” Chan pleaded. “I probably just close the door.” He said losing the business would spell the end of his career. “I don’t even have a high-school diploma. I can’t get any job.”
Greer said the conflict with Chan’s business was one reason the neighborhood needed to fully vet the plan — not before a small group of six neighbors and four reporters, but before the full Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hill Management Team.
Avallone missed the last regular meeting of that group, so he tried to arrange an emergency meeting with Wednesday before his proposal is due to go before the zoning board, on Sept. 9.
Not many neighbors could make the emergency meeting. Greer led a charge to urge Avallone to have his client push back the proposal another month to allow for full vetting before the WEB group.
Francine Caplan, a neighborhood activist, agreed. She said it would be in everyone’s interest to delay the BZA date, so that neighbors could talk it through with the developer in person, rather than coming uninformed to the zoning board and voicing objections at the mic.
Avallone said he couldn’t make any promises, but he’d recommend to his client to delay the BZA date and come before WEB on Sept. 16.
Beaver Hill Alderman Moti Sandman, who arrived towards the end of the 45-minute meeting, said he isn’t set against the plan.
“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Sandman said, as long as the tenants are responsible owners and safeguard against crime.
While several WEB leaders frowned on the plan, a small sample of neighbors on the street welcomed it.
As the meeting let out, Donald Williams (pictured) hobbled home along Whalley with a newspaper in a Walgreens bag.
“Yes!” he exclaimed when told the news that there might be a Laundromat moving in just a block from his home on Ellsworth Avenue.
“That would definitely be a big help,” Williams said. “I don’t have transportation, and I don’t feel like lugging clothes back and forth.” He said he has a washer, but his dryer sometimes breaks. The laundry place in the plaza by Edge of the Woods is mainly a dry-cleaner. So he walks with a cane three blocks up to Hobart Street to dry his clothes.
“I wish someone would put a Laundromat a little closer,” he said.
Two women wheeling carts back from the Shaw’s grocery store agreed. They said they travel all the way to the laundry place at Shaw’s to get their washing done.
Their Laundromat of choice, incidentally, is owned by the same company that seeks to move in next to Walgreens. Greer and other neighbors said they plan to investigate rumors about how the place has been managed, including whether it has attracted crime. (Avallone said his client told him there have been no incidents of crime there).
A quick stop to the Shaw’s Precision Wash ‘n’ Dry around 8 p.m. revealed a quiet place with arcade games and a TV protected by a plastic screen.
Ruperto Suarez (pictured at the top of this story), of Elm Street, was folding some T‑shirts after work. He said he usually finds the place clean and the machines run well. The only problem, he said, was that the place is too popular.
“The problem is the weekends,” he said in Spanish. “When there’s a lot of people, there’s no space to fold your clothes.”
Eli Greer emailed in photos he took of the Shaw’s Laundromat after the meeting (pictured), noting bulbs missing and a shopping cart left at the door.