According to a utilities study conducted by the Raleigh, N.C.-based Multi-housing Laundry Association (MLA), apartment communities can, on average, save 330 percent more water—a savings of 8,216 gallons of water per year per unit—by utilizing a common area laundry room instead of in-unit washing machines. In addition to water savings, properties with common area laundry rooms typically consume 500 percent less energy per year than communities with in-unit machines.
Those types of quantifiable green benefits could be used as a selling point to get eco-conscious Gen Yers back into common area laundry rooms. What’s more, the MLA study found that 80 percent of residents will utilize on-site laundry if owners and managers provide a common area laundry room.
Gonzalez says the best strategy to follow with common area laundry is to do it right or not do it at all. “There has to be a reason to go to your laundry room over a Laundromat,” he says. “It has to be a safe and creatively interesting environment. Think coffee and e-mail. At any community, there are people who meet regularly in certain community areas. There is a human face-to-face encounter happening.
“Residents are looking for that social outlet, looking for places where things could happen,” Gonzalez continues. “And I think the laundry room can still be one of them.”
Resident Files: Extra Credit
Student housing has the best that common area laundry has to offer, if only kids would give it the old college try.
As one of student housing’s largest common area laundry services firms, ASI Campus Laundry Solutions has a special mid-term trick up its sleeve. While students study for exams and prepare to head home for the holidays, ASI will often dial down the amount of cash necessary to do your laundry—sometimes by as much as 50 percent. “The whole idea is to get them to do the wash before they go home,” says ASI president David Goldberg. “It generates more ancillary income, even if we get half of them who would otherwise take it home. And hopefully it increases the satisfaction of the parents.”
As campuses across the country move toward apartment-style, amenity-rich living based on market-rate multifamily communities, the laundry rooms of yore are changing rapidly. Gone are the musty basement rooms lined with coin-operated washers and dryers and a couple of plastic chairs.
“The whole idea of co-locating amenities came out of student housing, and you’ll find great room-style common areas where the laundry room is connected to the fitness areas, to the game rooms, to the TV and study areas,” Goldberg says. Typical designs emphasize upholstered, upscale lounge-style seating and lighting like that in a coffee house—if the coffee bar isn’t actually co-located as well.
Laundry technologies such as Web-enabled machines for online monitoring and debit card systems to replace rolls of quarters were also born out of the student housing arena, Goldberg says. The latest bells and whistles are mobile applications for Web-enabled laundry machines that text message students the minute their jeans are dry or a washer becomes available for use.
“We’re finding adoption of that is slow for some reason, compared to the straight online access,” Goldberg adds. “Perhaps 10 percent of users are using it where available.”
Of course, just getting students to use the laundry room in the first place remains the timeless conundrum for service providers and parents alike. “We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for them to do their laundry,” Goldberg laments. “That has eternally been hard to do, other than if we showed up and did the laundry for them.”
