INDIANAPOLIS — When the Le Méridien hotel opens here in downtown in December, it will boast not only a completely new look and renovated rooms, but a totally revamped laundry as well.
The structure, located at 123 S. Illinois St., was built in 1928 and opened as a 200-room hotel called the Lockerbie, according to Nicholas Clark, general manager of Le Méridien. Later it was the Warren Hotel, and was again purchased in 1983 and renovated as a luxury hotel called the Canterbury.
Clark says with this renovation, the ownership group is spending top dollar to make sure that “everything a guest touches or sees will be brand-new.”
And while guests will presumably never touch or see the hotel’s laundry, it, too, is equipped with brand-new equipment to process the high-quality linens meant to give guests a luxury experience.
“Efficiency was the main factor here,” says Clark about what considerations went into choosing new laundry equipment.
“We knew we needed a sheet ironer to facilitate a luxury look of clean, crisp linen. To accommodate that, we reduced the number of washers and dryers, and went with newer, more efficient models.”
Clark says a wall was removed, opening up space for a small-piece towel folder as well. He expects that when fully operational, the 640-square-foot facility will process 385,000 pounds of guestroom linens in the first year of occupancy and employ three full-time workers.
“It [was] an old, outdated laundry in the basement like a lot of them are in older hotels in downtown areas,” says Curtis McDowell, Indiana sales consultant with Loomis Bros. Equipment Co., which provided the equipment for the renovation.
Having the laundry located in the basement created some obstacles when it came to installation. McDowell says the problem was averted by disassembling some of the equipment after testing at the factory and then reassembling it on-site.
Loomis supplied washers with high-G-force extraction, energy-efficient dryers and automated equipment for folding of towels, all with the goal of modernizing the laundry and preparing it for the new linens it will be processing, according to McDowell.
In total, the laundry will have two 60-pound-capacity Milnor washers, two 75-pound-capacity Milnor EcoDry dryers, a Chicago Dryer Co. Tandem 16-inch ironer/folder, an Air Chicago towel folder, and a Clean Cycle Systems Lint Lasso.
“By adding an ironer, we were able to take some of the production away from the dryer/tumblers, so we were able to reduce the dryers from three to two,” says McDowell.
Though Clark initially saw the creation of Le Méridien’s new laundry as nothing more than a necessary evil, he’s now proud of what they’ve accomplished.
“To be completely candid, we really did not want to have to process laundry for a 100-room hotel,” Clark says. “I am very pleased with the end result and think this laundry will be one of the more efficient operations that exists at a hotel of our size.”
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].