Dry-cleaning business will set students on path to fresh start

Dry-cleaning business will set students on path to fresh start Helping to end the cycle of poverty in a community may seem like a tall order for a dry-cleaning business. "One purpose is certainly to stimulate economic development, and it also has to focus on redevelopment and job creation," Brown said. So she did meet the criteria with what she plans to do. 29. The students can come from the Madison Apprenticeship Program, or MAP, an educational/vocational program that Shinall has run since 2005. Taylor's One Price Cleaners will accomplish that by tacking on 12 weeks of job skills training as a graduation requirement in the program, which Shinall said already has assisted get former drug dealers and others off the streets and into college or good jobs. But about a quarter of participants, she said, tend to lack job skills needed to move into employment, so the revamped MAP program will offer that, while providing what she hopes will be an economically viable business service. "It's to help make our community better," she said about her plan, "and to aid the people in the community be better. Because of its reasonable prices, high volume will be key to the business' success, and Shinall said she already had some clients signed up, such as the city's police and fire uniform contract and M3 Insurance. The second thing that could be different is who else will benefit. Shinall, who moved to Madison 11 years ago from Gary, Ind. The first unusual thing about the new company is that it will charge the same price — $3. (Men's dress shirts will be $2. The store will be modeled after CD One Price Cleaners, a chain of dry-cleaning stores in Indiana and Illinois. Permanent jobs figure into Shinall's plan because some program graduates, as well as other applicants, may be able to get one of the 10 permanent jobs the business expects to supply, in positions such as customer service, cashiering, janitorial work, dry cleaning or business administration. More work may be available through six to eight jobs at three more stores Shinall hopes to open over the next five years on Madison's East Side, in Fitchburg and in Middleton. City of Madison staffer Percy Brown is helping to oversee Shinall's $420,000 low-interest loan from the Community Development Authority. Dry-cleaning business will set students on path to fresh start Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 12/03/2012