Boldens say ‘It’s Time’ To Close after 63 Years

By: Betsy Reason

The Times photo by Betsy Reason

Craig Bolden (from left), his mom Joan Bolden and his sister, Beth (Bolden) Miller reminisce about Bolden’s Dry Cleaners’ many years of serving the community. The dry cleaners will close on July 29. Last day for dropoff is July 1.

The Times photo by Betsy Reason

The Boldens announced their closing of Bolden’s Dry Cleaners at the beginning of June. A banner with the closing announcement is displayed on the front of their two-story building at 151 N. Eighth St., just east of Logan Street near the entrance to the footbridge over the White River.

Dry Cleaner Family

Has Loved Serving

Our Community

It’s the end of an era for the last dry-cleaning business in downtown Noblesville.

The family-owned 63-year-old three-generation Bolden’s Dry Cleaners will close on July 29. Last day for drop-off is July 1.

Retiring owner Joan Bolden and her son, Craig Bolden, and daughter, Beth (Bolden) Miller stood behind the front counter, in front of the many moving racks filled with freshly cleaned items, earlier this month. They reminisced about their years of serving the community and talked about their anticipated closing.

“It’s time,” Craig Bolden said, as his sister and mom chimed in with the same two familiar words.  The business will be 63 years old this month.

Joan Bolden, 84, is ready to retire. She’s been working at the family business for about 50 years and is there every day but the weekends, she said.  Hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

“Don’t let her fool you. She’s here on Sundays, too,” Craig Bolden said.

“If we’re behind,” Joan Bolden replied, laughing.

One thing that customers know when they go to Bolden’s Dry Cleaning is that there is always a Bolden working.

“You can go a lot of places and not know who’s going to show up,” Joan Bolden said.

“We always show up,” Miller said.

“There is always a Bolden in the house,” Craig Bolden said.

A couple of the Bolden family teenagers have worked at the business the past few years.

“But the thing is, there were going to be no Boldens after us,” Miller said. None of Joan Bolden’s grandkids wanted to take over the business.

Miller said, “It’s just time for her (mom) to retire.”

Joan Bolden said it will be nice to “just be home” and not have to go to work. She looks forward to spending time with her sisters. “It’ll be nice to take some time and visit with them.”

Craig Bolden, 57, has worked for the family business for 37 years, and Beth (Bolden) Miller, 61, has worked there for 35 years.

The business has been for sale for more than 18 months. There were interested buyers who wanted to buy the business but lease the building, and buyers who wanted the Boldens to stay on and operate the business. The purpose of selling was so that the Boldens could retire and move on. But there weren’t any experienced dry cleaners interested.

“Mom has decided she doesn’t want anybody to have our name, and we really can’t find any people that we think would be good to carry on,” Miller said.

The dry-cleaning equipment, which was purchased in January 2016, after a March 2015 fire that closed the business for 10 months, will be sold back to the company that sold them the equipment, Haiges Machinery dry-cleaning equipment supplier in Huntley, Ill.

The property is still for sale. They think the location would be great for an eatery with seating on the trail, which their building overlooks.

Being open the month of July, only for pickup, will allow customers to pick up their items.

Miller said it’s going to take a while to contact customers to make sure all of their items are picked up. “I want the clothes to go back to the people. I don’t want the clothes to be hanging here and people ask us if we’re going to have a garage sale with what’s hanging left. I don’t want to. I want the people to get their clothes back.”

The Boldens announced their closing at the beginning of June. A banner with the closing announcement is displayed on the front of their two-story building at 151 N. Eighth St., just east of Logan Street near the entrance to the footbridge over the White River.

“We’ve got a lot of people cleaning out their closets bringing us stuff,” Miller said. “We got a huge surge of wedding dresses yesterday.”

Miller also said, “We’ve gotten ‘shock’ from the community. They’re not upset with us, but they’re sad to see us go. We’ve got great customers. Some of the people have come here, now their kids come here, and their grandkids come here,” Miller said. “They’re not disappointed or upset. They’re happy for us that we’re retiring. But I don’t know where to tell them to go (for their future dry cleaning.) That’s the hard part.” The closest dry cleaners are on the “outskirts of Noblesville.”

Joan Bolden said a lot of the people have been customers for 30 and 40 years. Some just bring in a pair of pants now and again, or to stop here to find out “what’s going on in town.”

Miller said they get new customers every day. “We had 147 new customers last month,” she said. “We’re on pace to beat that this month, with all of the new apartments … We have people walk down from the apartments with their clothes. Used to be that I knew everybody; I don’t know everybody anymore.”

Miller, who said they dry clean thousands of items each week, estimates that Bolden’s has dry cleaned millions of items in the 63 years.

The Boldens say “it’s been great working with family.” Miller said, “We still like each other after all of these years, that’s something. Some families can’t get along, but we get along great.”

Bolden’s Dry Cleaners does all of its dry cleaning onsite. Miller said, “We’re the only ones that I can think of that actually wait on the people and do the work all in the same location.”

Joan Bolden added, “That means a lot to people. They like to know when they drop it off, that it stays here.”

Craig Bolden said in recent years it’s become more difficult to get dry-cleaning supplies, and the supplies are two and three times more expensive. When machinery breaks down, there is one service tech they can call.

But still, the dry cleaning business isn’t necessarily slowing down. In fact, the Boldens say customers are dry cleaning more items. “I think people just don’t have time to do their stuff,” Miller said. “A lot of the items are not ‘dry clean only.’ We do jeans and shorts … choir dresses,” she said pointing to the hundreds of NHS choir costumes, covered in plastic, hanging on racks, ready for pickup. She said they do T-shirts and “things that people could wash at home. They just don’t have time, and they like to have them pressed.”

Miller said, “I feel we go above and beyond with our service, trying to give everybody what they need.” Bolden’s does dry cleaning for Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department, Noblesville Police, Westfield Police, Cicero Police and Carmel Police departments, for which Bolden’s picked up and delivered all of their uniforms. They also do the Carmel Mayor’s dry cleaning.

And every now and then, Bolden’s has done dry cleaning for Ruoff Music Center performers, including Michael Bolton, Mötley Crüe, Nickelback and Shania Twain. “They usually call us in the morning … And they’ll come back and get it,” Miller said. A couple of the Indiana Pacers brought in their dry cleaning years ago, too.

Miller said they’ve had loyal employees, including Renee Roy, 68, Cicero, who has worked for Bolden’s for 30 years; and Nancy Crump, who has worked there five years and her grandson, Colin Mulvany, who is best friends with Miller’s son, worked at Bolden’s during high school; and Karina Hernandez, Noblesville, a presser of 17 years; and Melissa Chastain, Noblesville, who works in the front and back and was hired in 2004; and niece, Ava Wood, a Noblesville senior. Through the years, they’ve employed a couple dozen high school-age kids who enjoyed the hours. Bolden’s closes at 6 p.m. weekdays and 1 p.m. Saturdays and are closed Sundays. The youth would alternate working on Saturdays. Bolden’s currently opens at 8 a.m. Monday-Saturday.

Bolden’s Dry Cleaning has a rich history in Noblesville.

In 1960, Edward Bolden and his wife, Bing, purchased the Noblesville Cleaners and Shirt Laundry, at the northwest corner of Eighth and Conner streets, from Orville Bays.

“There has always been a Bolden working since 1960,” Miller said.

In the early 1970s, Ed Bolden suffered a heart attack, so his son, Jere Bolden, and Jere’s wife, Joan Bolden, came on board at the business, then took over after Ed Bolden’s death. At the time, Jan Deering Cleaners, also family owned, which was next to the license branch on Logan Street, was their biggest, but friendliest, competitor. “If we had a problem or couldn’t get to a pair of pants a customer needed, we’d call over there and see if they’d take it. They’d do the same thing with us. If we ran out of hangers, we could call them.”

In 1973, when Jere and Joan Bolden moved to Noblesville, to a house on 10th Street, “right down from Grandpa’s Candy Store,” with their four children, all who later graduated from Noblesville High School, Kurt Bolden, Beth (Bolden) Miller, Craig Bolden and Susan (Bolden) Wood, the dry cleaners became a family affair, with all of the children working there when each one was old enough. Their location “was small,” and “hot,” and “had one front door” and “used to be an old gas station,” Miller said. Before being a dry cleaner, the building was home to H.R. Swaynie Phillips 66 and the Swaynie Buick Dealership, according to a 2005 Noblesville Times article by Jeff Zeckel. That fall, the business name changed to Bolden’s Dry Cleaners. The building was renovated a couple of times and included a drive-thru, and “everybody liked that.” On two sides of Bolden’s Dry Cleaners was a laundromat with space that went behind the dry cleaners in an L-shape.

In 1980, Bolden’s opened a second store in Harbourtown Center in Noblesville.

Craig Bolden said the dry cleaning business is all he knows. A 1984 NHS grad, he attended Ball State University for a year, and didn’t like college, so he dropped out and his dad sent him to International Fabricare Institute in Maryland, where he learned to be a master drycleaner in 1986. Miller, a 1980 NHS grad, was a flight attendant for about two-and-a-half years and also worked at American National Bank before coming to work at her mom and dad’s business. “I thought I’d come help her for a little bit, now 35 years later, she’s still there.” Both plan to seek new employment.

Joan Bolden, now the sole owner, built the current dry cleaners building in 1990 after the former property, at Eighth and Conner streets, was taken over by the County by eminent domain and razed during the Courthouse Expansion Project. The Hamilton County Government & Judicial Center now stands in Bolden’s Dry Cleaners’ former location.

“It was probably a blessing that we moved here, because of the space,” Miller said of the current building which sits on Bolden-owned land that was formerly owned by American National Bank and used to be a lumber yard “years and years ago,” Joan Bolden said. “American National Bank owned it and offered it to us, sold it to us … This was a great piece of property.”

The closing of Bolden’s Dry Cleaners does not include Bolden’s Cleaning and Restoration, which was started in the early 1980s by the late Kurt Bolden but is now owned by Tony Jackson.

A fire — that started in a clothing carousel near the drive-thru sliding door — on Thursday afternoon, March 26, 2015, closed Bolden’s Dry Cleaners for 10 months, reopening for business on Jan. 16, 2016. Miller said that was a very stressful time because customers were very upset about the fire and their losses. But she said all of their customers eventually came back. Their Harbourtown location closed after the fire and did not reopen.

Bolden’s Dry Cleaners survived the pandemic which started in 2020. They stayed open, drive-thru only, and condensed their hours and haven’t had their front lobby open since.

The Boldens have loved serving our Noblesville community.

“We’ve loved being involved in things, looking out and seeing what’s happening downtown,” Miller said. “It’s just been a good run.”

-Betsy Reason writes about people, places and things in Hamilton County. The Times Editor Betsy Reason may be contacted at betsy@thetimes24-7.com.