Grosse Pointe News

Sean Cotton, Owner • Anne Gryzenia, Publisher • Jody McVeigh, Editor In Chief • Meg Leonard, Senior Editor

16980 Kercheval Pl. • Grosse Pointe, Michigan 48230 • 313.882.6900 • Monday-Friday 9am-4pm

Forging his own future with a clean sweepFree Access


On a Google Maps street view of Belding Cleaners on lower Kercheval, the man with a broom sweeping the sidewalk is Joe Hebeka. He owns the company.
More on that soon.
On a mainly gray marble pedestal near the corner of Hebeka’s desk in his second-floor office overlooking Kercheval, two books stand between white marble American Indian chief bookends: “West’s Business Law” and Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War.”
Both volumes are readily-accessible reminders of a businessman’s need to balance protocol and ambition.
“One of the main things I took from reading ‘The Art of War’ was how you can use your knowledge and team to better your business,” Hebeka said. “A lot of that comes together when your team sees their leader as being one of them, someone who will do things most leaders won’t. That’s a leader others will follow.”
Which gets back to the Google picture of the top man doing bottom-rung labor.
“It’s hard to staff right now, but the people I do have are fantastic,” Hebeka said. “It’s almost give-and-take with them. I take care of them; they take care of me. That’s how things grow. I can’t do it without my staff.”
Hebeka, 41, bought the business in 2007, from his father, who’d owned it since the 1970s.
“I had a vision for Belding Cleaners when I worked for my dad,” Hebeka said. “I knew it could be more. I saw the final product way in the distance. Over the years, just one step at a time, I tried to get closer and closer to making that vision a reality.”

Photo by Brad Lindberg
Joe Hebeka sorts through paperwork in his office at Belding Cleaners.

He’s almost hit his mark.
“I see us as very close to the vision I saw years ago,” he said. “We do top-quality work. We have all-new equipment and machinery.”
He cleans the uniforms of Grosse Pointe public safety officers for free. All Pointes, not just the Park.
“They do a lot for us,” Hebeka said. “I love Grosse Pointe. I love my family. I want to see this whole area succeed.”
In the 1996 movie, “The Big Night,” a deceitful restaurateur rationalizes faking good relations with everyone. It’s a cynical sales strategy: “I am a businessman. I am anything I need to be at any time.”
For Hebeka, compatibility comes naturally.
“I try to be nice to everyone,” he said. “I try to see both sides of everything. That’s why, I guess, I’m invited to be a part of things because people know I’m balanced.”
He did some inviting of his own when founding the Grosse Pointe Park Business Association.
“It needed to be done for unification,” said Hebeka, president of the group. “It’s a decent amount of work, but it’s for the good of business owners and residents. I say that because we are serving all the residents. Naturally, they want to be in a community where there are successful businesses for them to shop at.”
Membership yields business-to-business discounts, inclusion in an online listing at visittheparkgp.com, advertising opportunities and more.
It’s part of Hebeka’s two-way street philosophy, which extends to municipal relations.
“The city’s receptive to the association’s needs and issues,” he said. “In turn, we do the same thing for the city. If there’s an event they need help with, we jump in.”
The cleaning business is more than 100 years old.
“Belding Cleaners was founded by the Belding family in 1918, on Kercheval in Detroit,” Hebeka said. “This location (on Kercheval) was built in 1929, as the first dry cleaners in Grosse Pointe.”
Belding Brothers & Company is the namesake of Belding, Mich, northeast of Grand Rapids.
“They were silk manufacturers,” Hebeka said.
Belding had mills in four states and one in Canada, according to more than 100-year-old advertisements in Hebeka’s files. Offices and salesrooms ranged from Manhattan to San Francisco.
In the company town of Belding, the Belding Library is a half block away from the Belding Museum, a former boarding house for females working in one of the town’s three silk mills, the only remaining one of which is now an apartment building.
“I think they funded one of their cousins to build this building,” Hebeka said of the Kercheval location.
History and employee relations aside, it is because of Hebeka being the victim of a surprisingly bold theft late November at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport North Terminal Big Blue parking deck that made him of interest to television news viewers throughout metro Detroit.
He and his eldest of three children, 14-year-old daughter Juliana, were coming home from visiting relatives in Florida during Thanksgiving. His wife, Angela, stayed behind a few extra days with sons Jonah, 10, and Jordan, 7.
Hebeka and Julianna stepped around a corner on the parking deck’s second floor to find his new Jeep Wagoneer and a big surprise.
“It was sitting on blocks with nuts and bolts on the floor and cars parked all around it,” Hebeka said.
The four stolen wheels and tires totaled a nearly $8,000 loss, a secondary concern at the time.
“My daughter had to get to school,” Hebeka said, “She didn’t want to miss dance practice.”
He arranged private transport for more than $100, took her to school, went home, got another car and returned to the airport to file a police report.
“They almost scolded me: ‘Why did you leave and then come back to file a police report?’” Hebeka said. “I said, ‘I have to get my daughter to school. I’ll do whatever it takes to get my daughter to school, then come back and deal with this mess. She doesn’t need to deal with it.’”
Julianna feared the thieves knew where the family lived.
“No, I told her, those guys are gone,” Hebeka said. “They’re on to their next theft. They’re probably doing it right now while we’re talking.”
A Wagoneer on blocks tells a story. A Wagoneer on blocks in a busy airport parking deck asks questions.
Hebeka can’t figure out how, at an airport post-9/11, where everything is supposedly under surveillance, everyone is suspected of something and every bag, pocketbook, piece of luggage and pair of shoes are put through the ringer, a group of thieves could waltz off with somebody’s wheels and tires.
“Nobody called us,” Hebeka said. “So, nobody patrolled the lot and saw it. No security guard in a car with a little orange light. Nothing. (Reporters) said 30 cars have been stolen this year. That’s one car every 12 days. I don’t know what more it will take before they put up cameras.”
His wheels are being replaced.
“I’m fortunate, but God only knows what goes on in that parking garage,” Hebeka said. “I don’t want little kids getting hurt.”