Board nixes laundry plan

One company”™s cleaning of many companies”™ dirty laundry is not one planning board”™s idea of what suits an executive park.

The City of Yonkers Planning Board this month denied an application by Cintas Corp. to build a 60,000-square-foot commercial laundry facility on an approximately 5-acre site in the South Westchester Executive Park. Alfred B. DelBello, the White Plains attorney representing Cintas, said the company planned to truck in uniforms from its business clients in the region and inspect, repair and clean them before redistributing to users. The proposed plant also included office space and a small retail operation, he said.

The planning board at its Jan. 8 meeting nixed the proposed project because it was not similar in character and impact to permitted uses, which include light industrial, in a planned executive park zone.

Planning board members, who toured a similar Cintas plant in New Jersey before making their decision, said the proposed laundry, which would use 500-pound washers and driers and require 80,000 gallons of water a day and a wastewater treatment facility to operate, was a medium industrial use not allowed in an executive park. The board also noted that truck traffic to and from the plant would use local streets and already congested Executive Boulevard.

“I don”™t believe that they liked it right from the beginning,” DelBello said.

A publicly traded company based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cintas manufactures and launders corporate uniforms and provides a range of services and supplies to more than 700,000 businesses in North America. It operates more than 400 facilities in the U.S. and Canada that employ more than 34,000 people. The company reported $3.71 billion in sales in fiscal 2007.

DelBello said he did not know whether the company will seek another location in Westchester County. Cintas officials have declined to comment on their proposed Yonkers operation.