By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Ken Larini has been part of the neighborhood on Alexander Street, the guy who owned the garage, gas station and towing service that helped keep Princeton running for 32 years.
He gradually shrank his business over the past five years to the point where he sold his property to Princeton University last week. When he came to the office on Monday, it was the first time in around 30 years that he no longer owned the place.
“This week’s been tough …,” Mr. Larini said Wednesday in an interview.
By his own admission, he is a dying breed of small businessman who used a personal touch with his customers — some of whom expressed feeling lost now that he won’t be around anymore. At Larini’s, people could get gas, their car fixed and a tip on a good restaurant.
“I’ve got people come in who don’t know what to do with themselves. They’re beside themselves, the older customers,” he said.
With his arms folded, Mr. Larini speaks from behind a counter in the area where customers once entered. Behind him is a display case containing model cars, along with a few family photos of two of his grandchildren and his wife and her sisters. Otherwise, the place is empty except for him and sister-in-law Sue Hohl, his bookkeeper.
“It’s strange, it’s been a long time,” she said. “It’s the end of an era, I guess.”
At 64, Mr. Larini sports a white beard and sees the world through a pair of glasses. He leaves with a wealth of institutional knowledge about Princeton; he was the type who knew which traffic light people needed to turn at to get where they were going and can recall the now-since closed businesses that dotted Alexander.
Larini’s used to be towing service for the two Princeton police departments and the university. That meant being available no matter what.
“Because we did the towing for the police departments and everybody else, we were always the first guys open. We were open every snowstorm. Every major problem, we were always there,” he said. “We just did our job.”
He could be a tough but fair boss on his employees. He recalled that he liked to say he had two daughters and 800 sons. Some past employees still stay in touch; his financial adviser used to work for him.
“I never sent them to do anything I couldn’t do,” he said of his employees.
Away from the office, he was involved in the community. He sponsored more youth sports teams than he can remember. He played in the annual Thanksgiving Day touch football games at Marquand Park.
Like a lot of people in Princeton, Mr. Larini is from somewhere else. He grew up in South Brunswick. From a young age, he was into cars, although he never went to trade school. His backyard and his home garage were the classroom where he learned by taking apart his parents’ cars.
At 21, he began operating his first Sunoco station in 1972 in Kendall Park; three towns followed after that, including Princeton.
“I came to get gas and I don’t live in Princeton. I’m visiting, so they pointed me in this direction,” said a woman who has pulled up in her car and interrupted Mr. Larini’s trip down memory lane.
“Closed,” he tells her, but pointed her in the direction of other gas stations located within a short drive.
Five years ago is when Mr. Larini decided to sell. He pointed to tax and other challenges facing small businessmen. When the university mandated that freshmen and sophomores at nearby Forbes College could not have cars, that put a dent in his business.
So what’s next? He has a car rental business in Franklin Park, so it’s not like he’s moving to Florida anytime soon. He still has time to clear out his garage — and leave the adopted community he came to know.
“I think we made a helluva mark here,” he said. “I think we kept a lot of things open and going.”
