Last month, residents in Cincinnati’s Lower Price Hill celebrated the grand opening of a new laundromat, Washing Well. The event was a big deal in a community where most residents rent and don’t have a way to do laundry in their apartment buildings. Previously, people had to bring their dirty clothes on a bus and travel 3 miles to the closest laundromat.
Run by Community Matters, the nonprofit laundromat turned a vacant drugstore back into a neighborhood asset and created two jobs. The Washing Well also will serve as a community meeting place.
IFF approved a $140,000 loan in partnership with Cincinnati Development Fund to cover the cost of washers and dryers for the laundromat. The Washing Well, which received grants from Impact 100, the Edward L. Hutton Foundation, and both the Greater Cincinnati Foundation’s P&G Fund and the Thomas J. Emery Memorial, is one of many projects meant to revitalize a neighborhood with one of the city’s highest poverty rates.