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Ground Broken for $2.5M Adult Services Center
HERMITAGE, Pa. -- A $2.5 million center set to open in June on the LindenPointe campus here will enable an organization to enhance the services it now provides adults with disabilities, say its principals.
Whole Life Services Inc. broke ground Thursday on an 8,600-square-foot training center that will be used to help adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities improve their academic, technical, life and business skills, said CEO Cindy Vogan.
"We'll be able to take in more people who need services," Vogan said as well-wishers and clients gathered for the ceremony at LindenPointe, site of the planned building, just off state Route 18. "We didn't have room anymore at our building on State Street. It's just going to be beautiful."
Through the new training center, clients can work on whatever skills interest them. "We look to the individual to plan their own program. That could include academic skills, exercise, cooking, computers,” Vogan said. “We pretty much help them with what they want help with."
Whole Life Services employs 73 at sites in Hermitage and Sharon, Vogan said. Once the new building is up and running, she said, at least three full-time employees will be added. There is also the potential for some additional direct-services positions.
"It's going to be a nice place for people to come to," Vogan said. "It's not going to look like a sheltered environment. It's going to be aesthetically beautiful and thus people will be happier."
An objective of the new center is to apply clients' skills to create products that can be sold, Vogan said. Sweets and cookies, for example, could be used for parties or special occasions. "We also have a silkscreen machine and we can customize and create T-shirts,” she elaborated. “They're learning to do the silkscreen process, cleaning the screens, folding the shirts and packaging them."
Vogan said it's difficult to find companies willing to hire adults with disabilities. The new center, however, enables these clients to develop a specific skill as they earn compensation.
"We have a consignment store" where clients make dips and meat rubs, Vogan said. "It's just so open to whatever we're going to do. It's driven by them."
Tyler Hudson, managing principal of Linden Asset Advisors, a division of Hermitage-based Hudson Companies, said the new center should be finished and occupied by June 1.
"This building will allow Whole Life the ability to offer and expand new programs through some of their current and future models," Hudson said.
Hudson first met Vogan about five years ago, he said, when he began leasing group homes in the Shenango Valley to the organization. "We've grown from a one-home relationship to developing a future with her commercial interest and opportunities," he said.
Whole Life will lease the building from Linden Asset Advisors, Hudson said, and LindenPointe could not have been a better location. "This is a central location in Hermitage and offers shovel-ready sites and an opportunity to put a shovel in the ground within 120 days. That's what really attracted us to this location," he said. "We hope to expand in the future with Whole Life."
Pictured: Tom O'Brien, Linden Asset Advisors; Cindy Vogen, CEO, Whole Life Services Inc.; Tyler Hudson, managing principal, Linden Asset Advisors; John Gruitza, project architect, Linden Asset Advisors.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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