Workers spend their morning packing kid's meal packages for Braum's, on Friday May 27, 2022, at the Goodwill Industries commercial services facility in Tyler. (Michael Cavazos/News-Journal Photo)

A new warehouse addition at the commercial services division of Goodwill Industries of East Texas will allow the organization to expand its operations.

The nonprofit operates a light manufacturing facility on John Carney Drive in Tyler, where it produces some products and performs “pick and pack” operations for a variety of companies and organizations, said Kimberly Lewis, president and CEO of the local organization. The work includes making certain kinds of highway markers for the state of Texas, bagging screw kits for heating and cooling systems manufacturer Trane and packaging toys for a company that provides kids meals to Braum’s, among others. Goodwill also operates a certified document destruction service.

The existing building there is 24,359 square feet, and Goodwill already had built one warehouse there and expanded it. The new warehouse could be completed in about a year, Lewis said, and it will about double the size of the John Carney campus. Its completion will allow the organization to stop using an off-site warehouse, she said. A city of Tyler building permit application places the project’s construction value at $2 million.

“We want to focus on that so we can hire more individuals with disabilities,” Lewis said, explaining they’re paid at least minimum wage or better, depending on their work level.

The project will allow the company also to increase hiring. The facility employs about 30 people with cognitive and physical disabilities, also providing educational and life skills training while they work there. With the expansion the firm will hire at least 15 more people, some who will not be disabled, including a truck driver.

In addition to the warehouse project, Goodwill Industries of East Texas is planning to renovate the bathrooms and breakroom at its store on the Loop in Tyler. That location is home to more than a retail operation — its youth work program, re-entry and veterans services program, job placement and other services.

In total about 30 people work there, and everyone — customers, program participants and employees — use the same bathroom, Lewis said.

“It’s pretty crowded,” she said, explaining bathroom and breakroom renovations will provide more space there.

The work follows a complete renovation of Goodwill’s downtown office during the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020. There, Goodwill is providing variety of training programs that are not just for people with disabilities, including information technology courses such as networking and cyber security and a program specifically providing training for women who want to work in the IT sector and an entrepreneurial boot camp.