A New Vision For This Former Sam's Club – It Now Serves the Blind
Exactly one year ago, Beyond Vision - a nonprofit career agency whose mission is to create meaningful employment opportunities for the blind and visually impaired - opened the first of its kind “VisABILITY Center” in West Allis, Wisconsin.
The 130,000 square foot VisABILITY Center is a specially designed workplace for the blind and features a manufacturing area, distribution center, offices and community space where blind and low vision employees complete machining, assembly, packaging, and customer support work – all under one roof.
The VisABILITY Center building has been outfitted with textured flooring which aids the navigation of individuals that walk with a cane, ambient lighting to minimize glare, and acoustic insulation to dampen stray sounds and ambient noise, as sound helps blind and low vision individuals orient themselves in space.
Beyond Vision believes that the new VisABILITY Center will serve as a national model of sustainable employment for the blind and visually impaired.
And as to the VisABILITY Center building’s former use?
It was once a Sam’s Club.
Beyond Vision was established over 60 years ago with the mission to improve lives for people with disabilities by providing job training services and sustainable employment opportunities to those who are visually impaired.
It has created specialized environments that enable blind and low vision individuals to experience the dignity of work and has contracts with customers like Harley Davidson, Caterpillar and Briggs & Stratton to provide machining, assembly, packaging, warehousing and customer support services – all produced and delivered by visually impaired people at its properties.
The VisABILITY Center in West Allis takes Beyond Vision's mission to another level. It is centrally located, proximate to mass transit, and includes modern design features and amenities that are not available at Beyond Vision's other properties.
Additionally, the size of the VisABILITY Center has enabled Beyond Vision to more than triple its workforce – which is critically important given that approximately 70% of adults coping with low or changing vision are unemployed.
Beyond Vision tasked Bray Architects to formulate a plan to transform the Big Box retail space into an accessible, multi-purpose facility focused on the key principles of texture, lighting and sound that help blind and low vision people orient themselves.
Additionally, its interiors team utilized goggles that simulated vision impairment to better understand how colors and materials might be perceived by low vision employees.
Bray even enlisted blind architect Chris Downey – who was featured on 60 Minutes – to consult in his specialty practice area: making conventional spaces accessible to the blind.
The end result? Bray and team incorporated the principles of texture, lighting and sound into the transformation of the many parts of the Sam’s Club such as:
Converted the former Sam’s Club tire sales area into a building maintenance shop by using high contrast paint and material color schemes to help low vision individuals distinguish between horizontal and vertical surfaces.
Transformed the main shopping floor into private office and meeting rooms and added a strip of carpeting along the perimeter where the floor meets the wall so individuals that use a cane can hear and feel that the wall is nearby.
Utilized the former grocery loading area as the employee entrance marked by soffit canopies with acoustic ceiling tiles that help users easily identify entry and exit areas.
Created a multi-purpose employee lounge, fitness area and resource room for individuals with guide dogs in the center portion of the building.
Exchanged a portion of the expansive parking lot into green space and walking areas that are open to the public.
The VisABILITY Center may not be just another unique reconfiguration and creative adaptive re-use of a former Big Box retail building.
Instead Beyond Vision hopes that it will also serve as a model for the future design of buildings that are principally used by the blind and visually impaired.