"I saw her get hit, then dragged by the truck," said Angel Gomez, 25, who works at a dry-cleaning operation only 10 feet from the accident site.

There were also isolated environmental concerns, including oil and chemical leakage near a building that housed a dry-cleaning operation.

His commercial laundry and dry-cleaning operation, operated in a former ice-cream factory in Harlem for a quarter century, had been shut for more than a year.

So, on Oct. 3, 1995, the board agreed to lease Mr. Karten's dry-cleaning operation and to turn the three-story cement slab into an elementary school.

Today, the laundry has become a dry-cleaning operation, the bakery a bagel shop, the liquor store a coffee bar, the uniform shop an upscale boutique for women's clothing.

The rule would not only require the latest cleaning technology but also would require that an airtight barrier seal off a dry-cleaning operation from surrounding dwellings and businesses.

Those questions included what role, if any, a former employee in the board's leasing division had played in arranging the $4.5 million, 15-year lease of the former dry-cleaning operation.

The dry-cleaning operation, which did not require as much power, is operating with a staff of 12, offering three varieties of service: two hours, same day and next day.

It also houses an enormous laundry and dry-cleaning operation for the group's 3,000 local members.

In Somers, 38 homes were found to have wells contaminated with tetrachlorethylene, believed to have originated in a former dry-cleaning operation at the nearby state prison.