EDENTON, N.C. — John Keenan knows that opening a full-service commercial laundry in Elizabeth City, some 35 miles northeast of here, makes good business sense.
The area’s first commercial laundry facility plans to open a new $2 million facility in the Pasquotank Commerce Park to provide linen service for the vacation market and to support local businesses in need of clean linens, according to Keenan, who owns Moneysworth Beach Home Equipment Rentals.
The 20,000-square-foot facility will bring the capacity to clean and deliver linens to 14,000 rental properties each week for area vacation homes and businesses. From towels and sheets to tablecloths and napkins, the laundry can purchase, clean and deliver a multitude of linen choices.
Moneysworth broke ground on the new laundry facility in December and plans to be fully operational by May.
The company chose the Elizabeth City business park because it provided a location that met Moneysworth’s needs for utilities, gas, sewer, space, transportation and an available work force, Keenan says.
“We are excited that Moneysworth has chosen the Pasquotank Commerce Park for this new facility,” says Rodney Bunch, assistant county manager for Pasquotank. “This company already has customers in the region, and I am confident they will broaden their services by finding more local customers.”
“Locating in North Carolina’s Northeast allows them to easily access their two key markets in Virginia Beach and the Outer Banks,” says Vann Rogerson, president/CEO of North Carolina’s Northeast Commission.
The laundry will operate year-round, but with the Elizabeth City facility supporting the beach, production demands will pick up in the summer months.
This provides summer job opportunities for students who might not otherwise find a local, full-time job to fill the summer months.
The laundry will employ up to 20 full-time workers to service the laundry and drive the trucks that pick up and deliver the linens to customers.
During the summer months at the company’s Kitty Hawk facility, 17 trucks leave the laundry daily to travel up and down the beach and up to 60 miles away to make deliveries.
“If you can drive there, we can deliver there,” says Jason Stanchak, general manager at Moneysworth in Kitty Hawk, N.C. He’s responsible for supervising the work of the 85 college students who converge on the Kitty Hawk property each June.
“We have made our reputation over the last 19 years of business by being a very service-oriented organization,” Stanchak says. “The new laundry facility will allow us to better service our customers.”
“We are seeing a trend toward companies locating divisions of their southeast Virginia companies in northeastern North Carolina,” says Gene Rogers, chairman of North Carolina’s Northeast Commission. “With the growing tourism market in our area, I am sure they [Moneysworth] will continue to add new business to their existing contracts.”
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