Women’s Bean Project turning Athmar Park car dealership into production facility

It’s time for the Women’s Bean Job to place down roots in a new element of Denver.

Immediately after just about 30 years in Curtis Park, the position-education nonprofit for females purchased a previous utilized car or truck dealership in Athmar Park to manufacture and deal meals products for sale at merchants all around the region.

“Every enterprise decision we make and all of our programming is afflicted by the quantity of room we have, and which is how you know you are out of area — when you cannot make choices to mature or to alter simply because of creating constraints,” mentioned CEO Tamra Ryan, who has been with nonprofit for 18 many years.

In June, the corporation, which hires gals who wrestle to find function — 85 p.c of the program’s participants have felonies — options to double its area and move into a new creation facility at 1300 W. Alameda Ave. in Athmar Park.

Ryan, 57, explained Women’s Bean Job plans to do a $2.8 million renovation. The nonprofit has hired William Brummett Architects to design the room and Palace Design to full the create out, which will include a 4,500-square-foot addition.

Women’s Bean Job hires all-around 60 gals on average every single yr to manufacture and package deal dry merchandise for a 6 to nine-thirty day period period, so they can learn the techniques important for mainstream employment.

The nonprofit’s products are offered in nearly 1,000 shops about the U.S., including King Soopers, Complete Food items and Safeway, and on the Amazon web-site. It has an ordinary once-a-year income of $2.5 million, Ryan said.

The most well-liked product is the 10-bean soup combine.

The new dry products output facility will give Women’s Bean Undertaking a lot more place to include production traces.

“We can make and bundle extra than a single products at a time, compared with our latest facility, where by we have to reset with just about every new merchandise,” Ryan said.

The nonprofit acquired its present-day area at 3201 Curtis St. in Curtis Park in 1995 for $185,000, according to assets records, and opened that identical year. Mainspring, led by Fiona Arnold, is less than agreement to acquire the setting up, Ryan said. Mainspring produced the RiNo retail complex Yard on Blake and has options to build a 5-tale hostel at 3030 Welton St. in Five Factors.

Women’s Bean Project’s recent 10,000-sq.-foot space has two production traces to make and offer its 50 products, which include baking mixes, soup mixes, popcorn and spices. The girls are involved from start to end, such as serving to acquire the raw components, packaging them with filler devices, sealing the products and shipping them out.

The corporation had been hunting to increase into a larger house for a several a long time. Final year, when the nonprofit found their new residence and saw it sat on 2.5 acres, Ryan recognized that it was extra than she desired.

“It would be ideal for economical housing and acquiring very affordable housing subsequent doorway to Women’s Bean Challenge would also be suitable,” Ryan said.

So, the nonprofit introduced the notion to Denver Housing Authority, which purchased the setting up and encompassing land for $4 million in May possibly 2020, in accordance to residence information.

Denver Housing Authority has contracted Warren Village to build 74 apartments, a finding out heart, playgrounds and a group yard adjacent to Women’s Bean Project’s new facility.

And in November 2021, Women’s Bean Venture obtained the 15,500-sq.-foot setting up, in addition its parking whole lot, from DHA for $2.5 million, in accordance to home data.

The new facility will have an business office to guidance the nonprofit’s human companies programming, like a room for healthcare and psychological wellbeing providers to check out, furthermore phone booths, modest assembly rooms and a laptop lab, exactly where application individuals can use laptops for occupation lookups or resume creating.

Women’s Bean Task has elevated $6.2 million to fund the go and continue to has $300,000 still left of its $6.5 million aim to get the space up and operating, Ryan said.

In addition to growing its generation, the nonprofit would like to expand its outreach, Ryan said.