Joplin Workshops begins renovating fire-damaged laundry building

Aug. 20--Although some evidence of the blaze that shuttered Joplin Workshops' commercial laundry in March 2017 remains, also unmistakable are the signs of progress.

Workers in hard hats milled about last week as heavy equipment whirred in the background. A peek inside the structure shows that a portion of the roof that was heavily smoke-stained nearly 18 months ago has already been replaced.

And still, the work to renovate Joplin Workshops' former laundry into multiuse warehouse space is somewhat bittersweet for Executive Director Susan Adams. She is more than ready for the work to be finished and, hopefully, to offer more work opportunities for Joplin residents who have disabilities. But there's a chance she won't be around to see it.

Adams has announced her plans to retire from the helm of Joplin Workshops, though she'll stay on until a new director is hired, so maybe the scheduled mid-October completion of the warehouse renovations will come first.

"It's very exhilarating," Adams said. "We are very, very excited because our first wish is to create enough jobs to recall those 50 people that were laid off 18 months ago."

Project details

In the early morning hours of March 24, 2017, Joplin firefighters were called to the scene at Fifth Street and School Avenue, where they found smoke billowing out from within the laundry building. At the time, Joplin Workshops had contracts with several hospitals and other large businesses in the area to provide linen services, which allowed the organization to employ 50 people in the laundry operation alone.

Plans call for the building to be essentially gutted and renovated into wide-open space to provide Joplin Workshops with as much flexibility as possible for its future. The only thing that has been decided, Adams said, is that it will not be a laundry operation again.

"They couldn't wait a year for clean laundry, and so those customers have since contracted with other linen service providers," she said. "So that business is just gone, and we understand that."

Adams said the organization is in the latter stages of negotiations with a local company that would create a few jobs and bring a new partner to Joplin Workshops, but she declined to provide details on the company or the type of work that will be done.

Trey Payne, project manager for Mid-Land Enterprises, the contractor handling the renovations, said the entire roof will need to be replaced, as well as some of the internal framing holding the roof up. Work began at the site in mid-July, he said.

"When we get some better weather, three, four days of good weather stacked up next week, we will take the entire roof off over the next two bays," he said.

Waiting list for jobs

The organization also provides work opportunities for people with disabilities in simple manufacturing, subassembly and recycling capacities. About 55 people remain employed at Joplin Workshops after the fire.

Some of those people who were laid off have either returned to other jobs at the workshop or found work elsewhere, but the vast majority, Adams said, have stayed out of the workforce, waiting for another opportunity at Joplin Workshops.

"Some of them are not able to work in a more traditional employment setting," she said. "Where we are able to break complex tasks down into smaller steps, where maybe two or three people complete a 10-step process, a traditional employer doesn't have that luxury of being able to do that. So the workshops typically provide employment (to people) with significant disabilities that struggle to be successful in a more traditional workplace environment."

The cost of the renovation project is just shy of $500,000, according to a building permit filed with the city authorizing the work. That money is coming from the organization's insurance policy, Adams said.

Adams encouraged area employers to consider Joplin Workshops, particularly in light of unemployment in the metropolitan area dipping to a record low 2.7 percent. She said she can't currently provide enough work opportunities for everyone who is interested.

"We are in a perfect position to support area manufacturers because we have the labor that other companies are desperately seeking," she said. "We actually have a waiting list of people that want to come work at the workshop, but we don't have enough work to be able to hire them."

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