- June 16, 2021
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Business
This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit news organization that covers Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color.
Timing wasn’t on Dawit Assefa’s side last year.
Assefa immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia 20 years ago. He started his first laundromat in Rosemount in 2011, and opened HD Laundry along East Lake Street in south Minneapolis in December 2019, just months before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. A few months later, police officers killed George Floyd, sparking civil unrest along Lake Street.
Looters tore through HD Laundry on the first night of unrest. Machines were smashed in pursuit of coins and windows were shattered, Assefa recalled. The damage was substantial, but when he surveyed the laundromat the next morning, he figured it was salvageable.
But that night the strip mall that houses HD Laundry went up in flames.
“The next day everything was gone,” Assefa…
