Kean’s Fine Dry Cleaning has opened a new Mid City location at 4665 Government St., near South Foster Drive. The new store will be the dry cleaner’s 14th in the market, and more new locations are on the way. Kean’s has also signed a lease with Commercial Properties Realty Trust for a 1,000-square-foot space on the ground floor of the Onyx Residences, a mixed use development under construction by CPRT at the corner of Third and Convention streets downtown.
Additionally, Kean’s is moving forward with plans for a new location at Highland Marketplace at Highland Road and Perkins Road East. That store has been in the works for more than two years, but the project has been slow to get off the ground because of delays unrelated to the dry cleaner. Kean’s owner Rock Rockenbaugh says he hopes construction will finally begin later this year.
The new locations, once all are completed, will give Kean’s a total of 15 stores in the local market. The downtown location, though new, will replace an older store nearby at the intersection of Main and Ninth streets. Rockenbaugh says the older store is too far from the hub of activity downtown and isn’t convenient for customers.
“The takeaway from all this is you have to go where the people are,” Rockenbaugh says. “Sometimes that means you have to move around and close one location to open another one. Downtown is booming. Mid City is being redeveloped and Highland Marketplace is just a great area with a lot of growth. So we’re following the people.”
The new Government Street location is located in a small retail development that includes a graphic arts store and a barbershop. It has a drive-thru, which Rockenbaugh says is necessary in today’s market, and will be located within walking distance of a planned multifamily complex called Square 46.
The new downtown location will be occupy one corner of the ground floor of the Onyx Residences building, which will offer more than 5,000 square feet of retail space on its ground floor and 28 one- and two-bedroom apartment units above. Construction on the building has been delayed because of the height of the Mississippi River.
Additionally, Kean’s will begin offering specialized service to tenants of the Bon Carré Business Center on Florida Boulevard. The company will pick up laundry from customers at their workplace and return them to a series of lockers that are being installed at the office park. Rockenbaugh says there will two different sets of lockers so that customers don’t have to walk too far to retrieve their clean clothes.
“They use this locker concept in a lot of big cities,” he says. “It’s all about convenience.”
—Stephanie Riegel
