Transition and Change are a Good Thing!
The Year 2022 will be considered a year of transitions for Horizon Goodwill Industries (HGI). After making its way through the pandemic and keeping nearly 500 employees employed, growth in our Southern area continued with the opening of stores in Mt. Jackson (Shenandoah County), VA, and Stanley (Page County), VA, in 2021.
The year started with HGI opening a new store in Frostburg (Allegany County), MD, in February. This store and its location in a part of the county are starting to become economically revived and are helping fill the gap from our previously closed store in Cumberland. The proximity of Frostburg State University (FSU) can aid students looking for clothing, furniture, and even employment. Our commitment to Western Maryland is even stronger with the addition of this store.
The move of the smaller Waynesboro (Franklin County), PA, store to a much larger location was completed in March of this year. The response to this move by the community was tremendous. On the day of the grand opening, 200 people lined up outside in 14-degree temperatures. Traffic in that store continues to be strong, which proves the move to the previous Food Lion location was a good decision.
Change continued in early summer; the decision was made to close the Burhan’s Boulevard store. This location had been operated as a .99-cent store and was unique to the HGI business model. The store was very active, and sales were good, but not good enough to sustain the operation. The store was slowly emptied of merchandise, and many employees accepted positions at other locations in and around Hagerstown.
Shortly afterward, the new North Pointe store was opened. This was a larger and much nicer location. The accessibility issues, such as traffic and parking, were eliminated by moving to the North Pointe Shopping Center. Some of the Burhan’s store employees are now at this location.
Once the Burhans building was emptied, the transition to the Business Services Custodial Division was started. Equipment was moved from the Corporate headquarters near the Hagerstown airport to the new location. The Business Services department provides various contracted services for private businesses and government agencies. A few of these are the Motor Vehicles Administration building, The Maryland Theater, Discovery Station, the Sideling Hill Visitor Center, the Western Maryland Children’s Center, the Internal Revenue Service, Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms, Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD, and many other locations throughout the territory.
Now that the equipment and supplies for the Custodial Division have been moved from the Corporate Office, the Business Services Outsourcing work could expand in the Corporate warehouse. This program provides employment and revenue by supporting businesses by packing and shipping materials to retail locations and overflow storage for those same businesses.
Resets (HGI code for internal remodels) of the Keyser (Mineral County), WV, and Woodstock (Shenandoah County), VA stores were just recently completed. New attended donation centers (ADCs) were also added in Strasburg (Shenandoah County), VA, and at the College Road area (Washington County) south of Hagerstown.
All these changes and the continued operation of all 19 stores and soon-to-be 5 ADCs are part of how we perform our work to support our Mission of Removing Barriers to Social Mobility.
By the end of 2022, our Mission Services group:
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Results of our 2022 work The Youth Services group found shelter for 50 young adults and permanent housing for 39 of them, and the Solution Center served 98 individuals.
- For adults, we sheltered 72 people and found permanent housing for 68 of them. Our Housing Navigators worked with 256 individuals looking for help.
- 119 people were put through Paid Work Training, 60 of those were moved to internal jobs, and help 213 people found Community employment. The average wage for those positions is $15.23/hr. and averages 33 hours per week.
- We also served 1431 free breakfasts, had 118 youths come to our Adolescent Clubhouse, and we have 28 people that are Department of Rehabilitative Services (DORS) clients.
These numbers exceeded anything that we’ve done in the past. With the amount of activity performed in 2022, the outlook for 2023 is even greater. Many things will be coming up in the new year and will be shared as we move through the calendar.