Red Hook Laundromat reopens

Red Hook Laundromat at 282 Van Brunt Street reopened on Monday, April 27, after a temporary closure at the start of the coronavirus outbreak in March. It will operate daily from 8 am to 8 pm. For safety, customers must wait outside while their clothes wash and dry and must fold their items at home.

The unexplained reopening, which followed a campaign of pressure from the community and city government, marked an end of sorts to a perceived public emergency in Red Hook. The crisis had its roots in the summer 2019 closure of the neighborhood’s largest laundromat on Lorraine Street, the future site of a mixed-use development. When COVID-19 shuttered the laundromat on Van Brunt Street less than a year later, Red Hook residents realized they had only one option left: the Hicks Mega Laundromat at 779 Hicks Street.

In the era of social distancing, one laundromat for an entire neighborhood – especially one with limited access to surrounding areas – was deemed insufficient. On April 14, community advocates prompted Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams to send a letter to Mayor de Blasio, suggesting several possible city interventions, such as providing incentives for the owner of Red Hook Laundromat to reopen his business, renting “portable laundry trailer(s),” or setting up a new laundromat in a vacant warehouse. The local elected officials, Nydia Velasquez, Velmanette Montgomery, Felix Ortiz, and Carlos Menchaca, added their signatures to the missive.

Neighborhood residents did not wait for de Blasio to act. Natasha Campbell, the founder of Summit Academy Charter School at 27 Huntington Street, reached out to a contact at Teach for America, who previously had helped the school obtain an on-premises washer and dryer through Whirlpool’s philanthropic Care Counts program, which aims to reduce absenteeism by ensuring that students have access to clean clothes. Whirlpool offered to make another donation to Red Hook – possibly as many as ten washers and dryers – if Campbell and other local activists could secure a location for their volunteer-run, pop-up laundromat. But a free, open site with electricity and sewage connections proved elusive.

Some locals who breathed a sigh of relief over Red Hook Laundromat’s surprise reopening in late April may nevertheless continue to hold a grudge over its sudden closure in March. The lack of advance warning meant that residents who had recently dropped off their clothes for cleaning ended up with their possessions trapped behind locked doors for more than a month and a half. The owner, who didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article, reportedly ignored phone calls from concerned citizens.

Red Hook resident Amy Dench noted that her family lost access to nearly 30 items of clothing at Red Hook Laundromat. “All of it is my husband’s work clothes, and he’s an essential worker,” she said. “We can’t afford to replace them.”

Dench declared that, after the long-awaited retrieval, she wouldn’t return to Red Hook Laundromat. Already, she had switched to Park Slope’s EZ Laundry Cleaners, whose coverage area for pick-up and drop-off service includes Red Hook.

Brett Yates