The Kalispel Tribe of Indians, through its economic development arm, has developed a large laundry-processing facility on the West Plains and has taken over laundry services for Providence Health Care facilities throughout the Spokane area under a long-term contract.

Brandon Haugen, general manager of the Kalispel Development Co., which developed the multimillion-dollar plant and the business plan to support the operation, says the tribe will be looking to broaden the customer base at the new plant once it becomes fully stabilized handling the huge Providence volume. 

“We would anticipate washing over 9 million pounds this year, and the facility can grow to 30 million pounds in the future,” Haugen says.

“As we stabilize over the coming months,” he says, “our goal is to go out and show others why we are a great option for washing their linens.”

Potential clients might include other health care providers, hospitality-related businesses, and other businesses or nonprofits that handle a lot of laundry, he adds.

The Kalispels’ new 32,000-square-foot facility opened in June about a quarter-mile southwest of the tribe’s Northern Quest Resort & Casino and west of the tribe’s Chevron at Legacy Landing gas station and convenience store, which opened in 2010. It’s located just off a westward extension of Sprague Avenue from Hayford Road that also provides primary access to the nearby Airway Heights Corrections Center, operated by the Washington state Department of Corrections.

The plant is located just south of a 60,000-square-foot warehouse that the tribe owns and where it had launched a 7,000-square-foot laundry operation serving the resort-and-casino complex several years ago, Haugen says. Up until then, the tribe had outsourced its laundry from the nearby casino-hotel complex, he says.

He declines to say how much the tribe spent on the new laundry facility, but says it has invested several million dollars just in the high-tech, high-volume equipment that has been installed in the plant. Garco Construction Inc., of Spokane, was the general contractor on the overall project and also designed the laundry facility in-house, Haugen says. Seattle-based Parametrix Inc., which merged with Spokane-based Taylor Engineering Inc. earlier this year, provided engineering services on the project, and Design Source Inc., of Spokane, did some of the interior design work, he says.

Under the Providence agreement, the Kalispels’ new plant is handling all types of laundry—from bedding and towels to clothing, such as gowns and scrubs—for Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center & Children’s Hospital, Providence Holy Family Hospital, and a number of other network clinics and related facilities. 

“We have over 10 smaller clients,” Haugen says.

The plant employs about 70 people, having added about 50 since taking over the Providence laundry services, Haugen says. He says Providence “did a great job trying to ensure a successful transition” through which many of the former employees at its laundry facility on the Sacred Heart hospital campus were able to move to positions at the West Plains plant.

The new facility is operating under the business name of Kalispel Linen Services, which is emblazoned on the sides of large delivery trucks the tribe has acquired to transport laundry to and from clients’ locations. 

 “We love the facility for many reasons, the first being energy efficiency,” Haugen says.

The type of equipment it has installed uses only about seven-tenths of a gallon to wash a pound of laundry, which compares with three gallons of water per pound using older technology, and can process up to 4,500 pounds per hour, he says.

The tribe also invested in an E-Tech brand automated laundry-management system that tracks all of the laundry throughout the cleaning process, he says. The computerized system uses overhead conveyor tracks to deliver dangling 150-pounds bags of laundry to wherever they need to be for sorting, washing, or prepping for delivery.

Providence says the Kalispels’ new facility is designed to meet health care quality standards and requirements set by the national hospital-accrediting Joint Commission, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Washington state.

Haugen says the hotel at Northern Quest uses high-quality linens that require special care while being laundered, so the tribe felt comfortable that it could handle the Providence system’s health care-related laundry handling requirements.

Another reason for its confidence, he says, is that it has hired a couple of industry veterans, Jim Leonard and Curtis Bash, to oversee the laundry operations. Leonard, who had been laundry manager at Sacred Heart and has 30-plus years of industry experience, now is director of Kalispell Linen Services. Meanwhile, Bash, who the tribe hired several years ago to manage the original Northern Quest laundry facility and has a lot of experience in health care laundry as well, now is manager of the expanded operation, Haugen says.

“We have two of the best in the business for health care and hospitality linens,” he asserts.

Kalispel Development, which now has its offices in a portion of the new laundry plant, reports to the Kalispel Tribal Economic Authority, the tribe’s economic development arm. Northern Quest is the KTEA’s largest enterprise, Haugen says.

In transitioning its laundry services to Kalispel Linen Services, Providence says it has closed its 22,800-square-foot laundry plant, located in a building southeast of the main Sacred Heart building. The facility had processed more than 6.5 million pounds of laundry annually, providing linens for a number of Providence facilities and for several non-Providence health care providers, says Liz DeRuyter, director of external communications for Providence Health Care.

She says the transition to the Kalispel facility began in July and was completed Aug. 22. Providence made the decision to get out of laundry services last year after determining it was no longer cost-effective to continue the services at the Sacred Heart location due to the age and condition of the laundry building there and the projected cost to rebuild there and maintain the services, she says.

Built in 1910, the building that housed laundry services is the oldest on the Sacred Heart campus, and most of the laundry equipment there is out of date and near its end of life, DeRuyter says. The building originally housed a power plant and was converted for laundry use in the 1970s, she says. The old laundry equipment there probably will be removed within the next few months, and a portion of the space there will continue to be used for laundry delivery and pickup, she says.

In contrast, the Kalispels’ facility is designed to be one of the most automated, environmentally friendly, and technologically advanced laundry facilities in the Northwest, she says.

Providence has been working for the past year to ensure a smooth transition for the 50 employees impacted by the change, DeRuyter says. Nearly all of those employees have transitioned to new jobs at the Kalispel facility or to other departments, or have opted to pursue other opportunities, she says.