Frantz Cleaners isn’t washed up after all. When Kay Richards retires Friday, she’ll turn the keys over to her right-hand man, Alex Manalili, who was able to negotiate a five-year lease with the new owners of the property at Garey and Orange Grove in Pomona.
It’s a welcome turn of events for Frantz, which is beloved for its 1950s rooftop sign and its homey approach to business.
I wrote in May about Richards’ impending retirement and her sale of the property. After hearing rumors the business would continue, I dropped in Monday morning for an update. A sign on the door announces: “Yes! We’re staying open!”
I had barely stepped inside when Richards immediately said from behind the counter, “I feel I owe you an apology.”
Everything changed after my earlier visit, she said — other than her retirement, that is. At 81, she’s departing Friday for Arizona. And escrow on the property still closes this week.
But when she and Manalili did a walk-through with the buyers, Manalili told them he’d like the chance to keep the business. The new owners said they’d think about it.
“It was on-again, off-again for a few days,” Richards said. But on May 31, a week after my column, the buyers came to terms on a lease with Manalili, to whom Richards bequeathed the business at no cost.
Perhaps their close look, and the sight of all the heavy equipment, made the challenges of repurposing the aging building more real. Meanwhile, here was a tenant, ready to sign a lease and pay rent.
“They wanted to put offices inside. But we’d have had to move all the equipment out. This way,” Richards said with a smile, “they don’t have to do anything.”
Easy money. Unless you’re Manalili, who hasn’t taken a day off in 26 years with Frantz and doesn’t intend to start now.
“Right now I feel nervous about it,” Manalili, 66, admitted of his lease, “but the clientele and the established name she has, I feel confident about that.”
Because he’s largely worked in the back rather than at the counter, a lot of customers have never met him. But if they’ve appreciated how their clothes have turned out, they know his work, even if Kay, and her late husband, Frank, were the faces of the business.
He thinks of them as his parents and he’s grateful that Kay gave him the business, free and clear, as if he were a son who’d inherited it.
“I’m so thankful. Everybody knows Frantz Cleaners,” Manalili said. “She gave it all to me, not for anything. So I will continue her legacy in the community.”
Richards is relieved to know the business will continue. Especially the coin laundry next door, which was rebuilt in 2020 after a fire and has all new washers and dryers.
“I’d hate to see that torn out. Now people get to enjoy it,” Richards said.
Customer reaction has been positive, naturally. “They were all, ‘Where are we going to go? We’ve been coming here so long,’” Richards related.
Gloria Quintero, who stopped in during my visit, said the same thing. Her husband was bringing his clothes in as far back as the 1960s. When she heard Frantz was closing, she tried a cleaners in Claremont. It wasn’t the same.
“I’m grateful they’re staying open!” she exclaimed.
There was only a slight interruption in service. On my May 22 visit, Frantz was no longer accepting clothes to be cleaned. Richards said that policy lasted only a day or two.
“Alex would say, ‘Go ahead and take them in. Take them in,’” she confided. “He hated not being accommodating to customers.”
By: David Allen; dallen@scng.com; Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
