Thanks in part to a $25,000 grant from National Grid, the former Schoharie Laundromat on Main Street in Schoharie, closed the day Tropical Storm Irene hit the village in 2011, has been reborn and recently celebrated its one-year anniversary.
Now named Wolfe’s Laundry Den, after owners Nancy and John Wolfe, the business recently received the $25,000 from National Grid’s Main Street Revitalization Program to help with the estimated $350,000 cost of renovation.
“To live through the storms was bad enough, but to see these businesses that never reopened, that was a shame,” Nancy Wolfe stated in a news release. “We knew that we couldn’t do it all ourselves, but my husband John and I were determined to bring the laundromat back to Schoharie. We’re so thankful that the grant from National Grid helped us get up and running.”
National Grid representative Patrick Stella said the Main Street grants are generally aimed at helping small businesses in upstate New York with utility costs related to expansion or renovation. He could not say how much National Grid gives annually to that program, but said it provides roughly $9 million a year in economic development grants to upstate businesses through all of its programs.
“The reason we do this is really to support the regions that we provide service to,” he said. “It’s National Grid’s feeling that if the communities that we serve are doing well, then we’re going to do well. It’s sort of a win-win proposition.”
The Wolfes bought the idle laundry in 2013 after it was abandoned in Irene’s wake. It reopened as Wolfe’s Laundry Den last March. Wolfe said the National Grid grant, which required a $25,000 match, “paid a lot of bills.”
The closing of the Schoharie Laundromat, she said, left a hole in the community, evident by the customers who stream in now from all over the county and beyond.
Categories: Schenectady County
