Colonial Cleaners has been laundering clothes and pressing shirts for 68 years inside a small storefront near the corner of 19th Street and Ingersoll Avenue.
The business has weathered a changing economy, shifts in workplace dress, neighborhood redevelopment and a massive road construction project.
This time, the fight’s too much. The dry cleaner will close for good on Wednesday.
Colonial Cleaners lost its lease after the property and a neighboring lot were sold to new owners who want to redevelop the land, said Nancy Hotchkiss, a worker and owner Tim Duncan’s girlfriend.
“It’s bittersweet,” she said.
The business has been in the Duncan family for almost seven decades, but Tim has been battling cancer and it's time to move on, Hotchkiss said.
Duncan declined to be interviewed and instead deferred to Hotchkiss to answer questions.
Des Moines developer Jake Christensen bought the property last year and is negotiating with a business that plans to buy and redevelop it.
The Des Moines Board of Adjustment granted Christensen a variance to raze the Colonial Cleaners building, 1928 Ingersoll Ave., and add a second story to the building next door at 1922 Ingersoll Ave. The request stated the new building could house a financial institution.
Hotchkiss said she and Duncan have heard the cleaners' space would become a parking lot for a bank.
Christiansen declined to name the bank and said a deal is still being worked out.
Tim Duncan’s father, Lew Duncan, started Colonial Cleaners in 1949. He sold the building, which once included an auto repair shop in half the building, to his son in 1992. Tim Duncan sold the building in 2014 but continued to operate the business with his sister, Kathy Foggia. Lew Duncan died in 2004.
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The business has changed over the years, Hotchkiss said. When many businesses dropped formal suit and tie dress codes in favor of business casual, the dry-cleaning industry saw changes too, she said. “Twenty, 30 years ago people dressed up more,” she said. “Not anymore.”
Colonial Cleaners also persevered when a massive construction project extended Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway beneath Grand Avenue near the dry cleaner and caused road closures and dirt for months.
Downtown workers and residents from surrounding neighborhoods used the business loyally, Hotchkiss said.
“This is really a good location. Lots of traffic goes through this intersection,” she said.
Duncan is considering a partnership to keep the business going, although details are yet to be worked out, Hotchkiss said.