🔒$30M warehouse conversion into industrial laundry facility expected to bring more than 200 jobs to Hartford

About 115 years ago, Polish immigrant Max Potack went to work at a small laundry service in Brooklyn, New York, operated by two of his uncles. A&P Coat and Apron Supply laundered linens and aprons for butcher shops and restaurants, making deliveries with a rented horse and carriage. Over the past century, the company evolved into Unitex Textile Services LLC, with about 2,200 staff operating out of 13 facilities in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Run by Potack’s descendants, the company sanitizes and rents medical uniforms and linens to hospitals, nursing homes and other care facilities in a territory stretching from Bangor, Maine, to northern Delaware. In Hartford, the family-owned company is undertaking a $21-million expansion and renovation of a 130,000-square-foot industrial building, transforming it into a massive laundry facility that will eventually employ about 220 people. The building, at 121 Wawarme Ave., had housed a Hartford Courant newspaper inserting operation. A Unitex subsidiary bought it in early 2024 for $9 million. In about a year, the building will begin its new life as a washing, sorting and distribution facility for Unitex, providing a constant stream of cleaned linens to medical facilities in Connecticut and parts of Massachusetts. “This will be the sixth (and largest) plant we’ve constructed in the last 20 years, and we continue on that growth trajectory,” Unitex President David Potack said during a recent tour of the Hartford development site. “There is no one in our market that has added that type of capacity, or has that type of investment, or need for investment that we have. And that’s all coming from growth over time.”

The company’s growth has been propelled by existing clients that have absorbed other operations, as well as a proliferation of outpatient centers, he said. “There has been a lot of consolidation in the healthcare industry over the past 10 years,” Potack said. “We have been fortunate to grow with our clients.”

More automation

Unitex currently owns and operates four smaller industrial laundry facilities in Connecticut — two in Hartford, and one each in South Windsor and Waterbury. As the Wawarme Avenue facility opens, Unitex will close three of its Connecticut sites and consolidate operations in the Capital City. An existing 18,205-square-foot facility on Ledyard Street in Hartford will remain open. That property is already outfitted with modern equipment and focuses on uniform services, said Unitex CEO Robert Potack. The facilities slated to close currently handle about 850,000 pounds of laundry per week. The new facility is designed to accommodate 1.2 million pounds weekly. All staff from the shuttered facilities will be invited to work at the new one, Robert Potack said. He expects to launch the Wawarme Avenue facility with 160 to 170 staff, and eventually increase to 220 employees as the client base expands. The new plant will also have a higher degree of automation and use more energy-efficient equipment, company leaders said. The project will be financed through revolving credit lines with JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citizens Bank, Robert Potack said.

Raising the roof

One unique aspect of the project is that Unitex is paying contractors to raise the roof — from 22 feet to 32 feet — of the Wawarme Avenue building. The complex operation is being overseen by Maryland-based Rooflift Specialists and Florida-based Rooflifters. The job involves anchoring the building’s concrete walls, then cutting the roof into three sections, each of which will be raised, separately, at a snail’s pace by dozens of synchronized hydraulic jacks. The roof will then be secured to new, taller beams. The extra height will allow Unitex to install about a mile of gravity-powered track and elevated platforms. This will allow sacks of laundry to cycle through different stations within the plant without intense labor. This is the second time in five years Rooflifters and Rooflift Specialists have worked on a project for Unitex. Rooflift Specialists President Craig Jones said he has seen increasing demand for roof-raising projects in the industrial sector, given the increasingly scarce land suitable for new construction, and more stringent land-use regulations. In recent years, Jones said, his company has averaged about nine to 10 jobs annually, double what it performed a decade earlier. “There has been a constant increase in demand for this service,” Jones said. “It makes financial sense, and the more people that learn about it, the more they spread the good word.”

Local support

The Hartford City Council two years ago signed off on a 10-year, tax-fixing agreement to support Unitex’s expansion. Under the agreement, taxes on equipment and real estate will hold at $125,200 in fiscal 2026, then jump to $513,540 the following year. After that, the company’s property taxes will fall gradually to $330,000 in fiscal 2031, when the tax level will hold for another five years. Potack said Hartford officials have been enthusiastic in their support of the expansion, including by quickly processing permit requests. “They were very appreciative of us bringing more jobs into the city,” Robert Potack said.