Laundry List of Conveniences Can Brighten Wash Days

Most of the excitement near Sunset Boulevard and Alvarado Street in Echo Park used to be blares from the sirens of the ambulance and firetrucks roaring out of Station No. 20.

But more and more these days, it’s the low hum of washing machines and dryers that’s attracting the attention.

Lucy’s LaundryMart, where customers can, among other things, eat lunch, do their banking, shop for milk and, oh yeah, wash and dry their clothes, has opened a 9,000-square-foot outlet near Sunset and Alvarado, representing a promising shot in the arm for area businesses.

Determined to attract more customers by livening up a dreaded chore, the Lucy’s chain offers services beyond the laundry-related under its roofs: fast-food franchises like Burger King and Subway, mini-convenience stores, TV sets, private mail centers and a cash advance company.

Industry observers say Lucy’s megastore approach of mixing suds with Pampers, sodas and cheeseburgers is setting a novel trend. “It’s a very unique concept,” said Brian Wallace, executive director of the Coin Laundry Assn., a trade group representing about 30,000 coin laundries nationwide.

Since Lucy’s opened in Echo Park in late August, merchants have witnessed a growth in foot traffic in the neighborhood. “Every week we see new faces in our store,” said A. Joaquin Plazaola, sales manager of La Popular furniture store, a venerable Echo Park

institution next to Lucy’s.

The latte lovers at Station No. 20, across the street from the one-stop laundry, are already looking forward to the opening in December of a Starbucks coffee shop inside Lucy’s. “I can’t wait,” one firefighter said.

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Until Lucy’s arrival, there was little pizazz around Sunset and Alvarado.

Although the nearby French restaurant, Taix, flourished, several taco stands next to El Rancho market on Alvarado floundered. The old Studio movie theater on Sunset, under renovation now, has been empty for years. Various other businesses--a carwash, antique shops, video and music stores and travel agencies--are neighborhood fixtures, but they haven’t attracted the kind of customer traffic that is now showing up at 2134 W. Sunset Blvd.

For many years, the address was home to banks--among them branches of Security Pacific, First Interstate and Wells Fargo.

When Wells Fargo was acquired by Norwest in 1998, the branch on Sunset closed despite a campaign by Los Angeles Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg to keep it open.

Although the bank’s ATM remains in use there, the building itself was shuttered for the better part of 18 months.

Then, earlier this year, a sign went up announcing that Lucy’s was coming.

Lucy’s LaundryMart is a 5-year-old Torrance company that thrives on constructing and maintaining mega outlets in inner-city neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles. “We look to serve urban areas, which are underserved,” Lucy’s general counsel and Senior Vice President Robert Pardo said.

Since its first outlet opened on Inglewood Avenue in Lennox in 1994, the company has opened nine more stores, including laundries at 3rd Street and Normandie Avenue on the edge of Koreatown, Figueroa Street and Colden Avenue in South-Central, 8th and Bonnie Brae streets in Pico-Union and Sunset near Western Avenue in Hollywood. Four more are scheduled to open next year.

They follow the formula established at the first store. There are attendants to help customers with the washers and dryers. Outlets feature products usually found in convenience stores (Lucy’s in Echo Park sells a gallon of milk for $2.99 and jumbo packages of Pampers diapers for $13.79 each). Fast-food franchises such as Subway and Burger King have counters inside.

Since its opening, Lucy’s in Echo Park has been bustling, especially at night. Without giving specifics, officials say the outlet is already showing a profit.

Customers say they can see why. “It was as if this place was built for me,” beamed Silver Lake resident Rob Helms, 30, as he loaded wet clothes into two dryers on a recent morning. “I can wash clothes here. I can watch TV here. I can get a Subway sandwich here.”

Another customer, Belmont High School student Ian Becker, 16, whose family goes to Lucy’s on Thursdays, likes the fact that the store took over the bank building. “We used to come here when it was Wells Fargo,” he said. “Now we come here to wash clothes.”

Added Gonzalvo Martinez, 31, in Spanish: “I hate washing clothes, but this place makes it much easier to do.”

With its 131 washers and dryers, Lucy’s is much larger than its competitors in Echo Park and Silver Lake. Industry watchers say smaller mom-and-pop operations may not be able to keep up with the flashy newcomer, but so far it seems too early to gauge Lucy’s effect on the local suds business.

The owner of one laundry just two blocks from Lucy’s said she has lost few customers. “My clients went up the street out of curiosity,” said Gloria Topete, who operates 30 washers and dryers at Sunset and Coronado Street. “They experimented. Now they’re back with us because they know us.”

If there is a note of discord inside Lucy’s, it is the gripe from older customers that there’s no need for nickels, dimes and quarters there. A “credit card” system has been instituted to operate washers and dryers. Customers use ATM-like machines to insert $1, $5, $10 or $20 bills to give cards the necessary value to operate the machines.

Wash cycles, depending on the washer’s size, range from 50 cents to $2.75. Dryers cost 10 cents for 10 minutes. But in December, drying will be free as a promotion.

Even though there are printed instructions and brochures in English and Spanish about the cards’ use, customers still complain. “Older customers don’t like it,” admitted Mari Barrios, a Lucy’s manager.

There’s also the view of some along Sunset that Lucy’s is an out-of-character intrusion on Echo Park’s sometimes offbeat side. “Lucy’s is the McDonald’s of Laundromats,” sniffed Oscar De La Cruz, 29, whose Luxe de Ville clothing store for the hip is across Sunset.

But he also admitted to switching to Lucy’s. “It’s close by and I do live in the neighborhood,” he acknowledged.

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By coincidence instead of corporate planning, there is a Lucy actually working at the Echo Park store.

The company bears the name of the housemaid who decades ago helped wash the clothes of founder Bill Cunningham and 13 siblings. (“I was really too young to remember her,” Cunningham admitted.) But until recently, no one with that name was employed at Lucy’s.

Inevitably, unknowing customers ask: “Where’s Lucy?”

“I’m right here,” answers Lucy Ramirez, 23, a native of El Salvador who is in charge of the washers, dryers and the convenience store counter. “I love my job,” she said. “It keeps me busy, and it’s not boring.”

A single mother who supports herself, a 2-year-old daughter and her mother, Ramirez has worked her way up to a manager’s position with Lucy’s after spending two years with another laundry company. “The easiest part of the job is dealing with the customers,” she said. “I’m the friendly type.”

So when the question is asked, she chuckles.

“No, I am not the owner,” Lucy says, “but I wish I was.”