Building a beacon for the blind

Lighthouse for the Blind is nearly ready to serve as a beacon for blind people in the Spokane area who are looking for work.

The Seattle-based nonprofit is a contract manufacturer that employs people who are blind or who have limited sight. The company bought an old Tidyman’s supermarket along Addison Street, on Spokane’s North Side, and is well under way on a remodel there.

Late this month or in early April, the organization expects to open Inland Northwest Lighthouse and gear up its first production line—one that will make hanging file folders for federal government agencies. Brian Ruth, production manager for Inland Northwest Lighthouse, says that within a year, the company hopes to have 10 production lines up and running. Other such lines will make a variety of products, including paper cutters, whiteboards and easels.

Five people will work at Inland Northwest Lighthouse when it opens, and more than 50 could work there within a year. Ruth says at least 75 percent of the company’s employees must have limited or no sight. In the Seattle operation, 87 percent of the 220 employees are blind or visually impaired.

Pat O’Hara, the organization’s Seattle-based vice president of operations, says the company has analyzed the Spokane labor pool and has found a surplus of blind people who are seeking employment. All but three of the employees at the Spokane plant will be hired locally. The three blind workers who will transfer from the Seattle operation are former Spokane residents who had moved to Seattle for jobs with Lighthouse.

When Lighthouse decided to expand into the Spokane market, O’Hara says he wasn’t expecting to launch the facility in an empty supermarket building. They looked at the old Tidyman’s as the last stop on a day-long search for quarters and “fell in love with it.”

He says the 55,000-square-foot building makes sense for a number of reasons. It has an open floor plan, and most of the space is furnished with bright, fluorescent lights. Also, it has adequate electrical infrastructure to power a manufacturing operation. Finally, the property has three different bus routes that stop on its periphery, an important factor since many of its prospective employees use public transit to commute to work.

“This worked out perfectly,” O’Hara says. “We’re excited about being a part of the community.

Linn Parish is the editor of BUILDING magazine. He can be reached at lparish@vivopub.com or 509-624-6300, ext. 314.