King of Prussia Laundromat Will Have Free Wifi, a Coffee Bar and Will End the Wrinkled-Dollar Drama for Good

Sure, you can go to a regular laundromat–lug your overlarge, sticky bottle of detergent, or forget it and use those juice-carton powders that clump; get 500 quarters from the bank or try feeding your wrinkled dollar into a stubborn, SEPTA-like change machine; flip through a disturbingly crinkled copy of Ladies Home Journal from 2009 after your phone battery dies; fight with other patrons for the one dryer that’s hot; and watch, in a daze, as a 3-year-old child places her half-sucked lollipop onto your leg, where it adheres to your jeans as though her spit is Krazy Glue. That’s all out there for you anytime you want it.

Or…as of January 2014, you can go to the Village Mart Laundromat, which breaks ground next week in King of Prussia.

Here’s the deal: The wrinkled dollar/too-new dollar problem will be no more. Village Mart machines will let customers pay with debit card, credit card or by mobile phone–a system called Easypay (can no one think of a new name for this function? How many things can be dubbed Easypay before the patent office explodes?). The facility will have 66 dryers and 51 washers in an almost 6,000-square-foot space, plus flat panel TVs, a coffee bar and free wifi. The developer is KOP-based Pasquale Properties, a third-generation family-owned commercial real estate business.