Nina Anderson announced this week the sale of the King Koin Laundrette in Blackduck to Grant Foss. The sale was completed Monday, Oct. 11.
Foss was born in Littlefork, Minn., and completed high school there before earning a bachelor's degree in industrial technology at Bemidji State University. He has worked as an electrical instructor at Northwest Technical College in Bemidji for the past five years. Not new to the laundry business, Foss also owns the Chicago Laundromat in International Falls.
Foss said he was excited about the purchase and will immediately begin updating the machines. In addition, he plans to add wireless Internet service, coin-operated computers and new vending machines. The laundry will be open around the clock as Foss will make Blackduck his home base.
Anderson and her late husband, Lawrence, purchased the laundry Sept. 1, 1973, from Ralph and Mae Rose Baltes.
"This is an emotional time for me as this has been my home for the past 37 years of my life - lots of memories," she said. "The best parts of the business were the special and faithful customers. I am grateful for their patronage and caring. I'll miss seeing everyone in the laundromat."
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Anderson encourages everyone to stop in and meet Foss.
"You'll like him immediately and the improvements he has planned," she stated.
Anderson's husband was the key person to keeping machines in working order, and since his death in 2005, Anderson said, it has been difficult to keep up with repairs.
"I am not a mechanic. I wish I was," she said.
She noted that Lawrence Anderson as a teenager, had worked in the cleaning plant in Blackduck when he was a teenager in the 1940s. The plant was the beginning of the laundry business in Blackduck.
