Permanent Vacation

By Bob Nieman | Jan 03, 2011

Danny Pfister took a short trip to Alaska – and he never came home.

“I came up here on a 10-day vacation in January of 1997,” said Pfister, who had dabbled in commercial real estate and financial services back East. “My 10 days became five and half months. I went back home, packed everything up and came back here for good.

“The majority of the stories up here start out, ‘I only came here for a short vacation…’”

However, most of them don’t finish with, “…And I ended up building a laundromat.”

But that’s just what Pfister did.

“We didn’t have a laundromat,” explained Pfister, whose coin laundry is located in Girdwood, a small town about 40 miles from Anchorage, with a population of approximately 1,500. “We hadn’t had one for three years, so I purchased a vacant lot in the town square. I designed and served as the general contractor on the building. I had never built anything before in my life.”

But Pfister – whose brother, Mike, is also a laundry owner and is the current president of the Delaware Valley Coin Laundry Association – had a clear vision of what he wanted, a full-service “community needs” center.

“I had a tenant mix in mind when I built the place,” he said. “I wanted a one-stop shop – get some food, buy some beer, get your hair done, get a massage, take a shower, check your e-mail and do your laundry.”

And visitors to Pfister’s place can indeed accomplish all of the above.

The Girdwood Community Needs Center

The entire center – totaling 3,200 square feet – includes Pfister’s 1,500 square-foot Girdwood Laundry, which also features four shower stalls, three computer stations with Internet access, and a T-shirt printing operation. In addition, Pfister leases out the remaining 1,700 square feet to a Mexican restaurant, a hair salon and a massage studio.

The rustic, log-cabin-style building boasts Douglas Fir siding, while all of the supports for the overhangs and porticos are constructed from solid beams. In the laundry area, Pfister installed Mannington commercial no-wax flooring.

What’s more, Pfister estimated that he has probably $50,000 to $60,000 worth of original and limited edition artwork displayed within the center – mostly emphasizing the Northwest Pacific and Northern Lights themes.

In fact, the entire year-and-a-half construction process came with a $750,000 price tag, according to Pfister.

Two Surprises

Included in that three-quarters of a million dollars is a $24,000 bill that Pfister definitely wasn’t expecting.

“The laundry is on a well,” he explained. “They had no city water when I built my place. That was a shock. I thought it would cost maybe $50 a foot, but it turned out to be $24,000 for a commercial well.”

It was this lack of water that led Pfister to include four shower stalls in his Girdwood facility.

“A lot of buildings in this town don’t have running water,” he said. “And a lot of the rental properties don’t have washers and dryers. They have what are called ‘dry cabins,’ which are cabins that have electricity but no running water. It’s still like the old frontier here in many ways.”

During the summer, Pfister, who charges $6 per shower, will accommodate an average of 16 to 20 showers per day. However, in the winter, that number drops to about three a day.

The decline in the number of showers purchased coincides with a steep drop-off in laundromat business during the winter as well, which was another surprise for Pfister.

“When October hit, all of a sudden there are only two or three people coming in per day,” he said. “Before I opened the laundry in 2004, I used to go to Hawaii from October through January. I wasn’t here during the dead period, before the ski mountain opens. The restaurants close for four or five weeks at a time. Everybody goes on vacation, and there is nobody in this town. I thought I was going to be busy straight through the year, but I’m only really busy three months of the year.”

During the summer, passengers and crew from several of the cruise ships that stay at the local hotel will do their wash at Girdwood Laundry before getting back on the ship. In addition, the laundry gets most of its business from locals, campers, backpackers and tourists.

“It took me several years, but I finally got the people coming here to do their quilts and pillows and sleeping bags,” he added. “They’ll come in several times a year with larger laundry loads. Because of the different mix of tenants I have, people who didn’t necessarily come here to do their laundry will come in and see the laundromat.”

One-Man Show

Girdwood Laundry – also know as The Laundromall – is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the winter, and 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. during the summer season. And Pfister, who lives close by, is always on site. Despite the help of part-time attendant, this operation is mainly a one-man show.

It includes a steady wash-dry-fold business in the summer and some smaller commercial accounts, too.

“Wash-dry-fold is big during the summer,” he explained. “I get a lot of fisherman. I also do pickup and delivery at the local hotel, bed linens for an area hostel, and greasy rags and towels for a couple of restaurants.”

To keep his operation simple, Pfister had the entire store automated – from the interior lights to the door locks to the fountains outside; everything is on a timer. Also, he noted that he was the first laundry owner in the state of embrace the dollar coin, which has enabled him to “collect four times less often.”

So, may there be other coin laundries in the works?

“Absolutely not,” he laughed. “Originally, I didn’t come up here to work. Now, I’ve got to work for a living.”

Regardless of what he says, one gets the feeling the Danny Pfister is on a permanent vacation… and loving every minute of it.