“I encourage everyone in the community and in the surrounding towns to visit this beautiful shop and take home something beautiful,” said Dennis Morrell, chair of New Britain Downtown District.

Morrell and Justine Moriarty from the Downtown District presented the team a broom and dustpan as a part of their Clean Campaign to keep downtown clean and beautiful.

“I want to thank Susan Yeagal, who will be managing the store, and some of the individuals who will be learning fulltime employment as we’re always looking for employment in the community,” said Ann Rewet, CEO of CCARC. “They have done a great job getting the shop ready.”

In a little over a month the space located at 117 West Main Street was transformed with a blend of hardwood floors and carpet, freshly painted off-white walls, wall décor and shelving.

“June (O’leary) has made our lives easier through covid; extremely supportive with donations but also for the store,” Rewet said. “We had one little issue with our sidewalk, and within a day June actually was making it work.”

“It wasn’t hard at all to open during the pandemic,” Yeagal added. “It’s a pleasure to be here; we’re so happy to be a part of New Britain and to be a part of the business community.”

Something Beautiful is a new entrepreneurial venture of CCARC which provides employment opportunities for individuals with intellectual disabilities. With about 200 individuals in CCARC those participating in CCARC’s Group Supported Employment program will assist with organizing donated items, setting up displays and greeting customers.

“I think the store is fantastic and I think we need something like this – it’s going to be a nice place for people to shop,” said O’leary, disability services advocate for the city of New Britain. “It’s welcoming and it’s wonderful giving people employment opportunities and that’s what we really want to do at CCARC, be a leader in that.”

“We currently have employed four individuals,” Yeagal added. “We have no limits; we’re looking forward to really expanding and doing a good job.”

All the items sold in the shop were donated and all the proceeds go to the employees. The shop is currently taking cash only but will be taking credit cards soon.

“How nice is this and what great quality items they have, too,” Mayor Erin Stewart said. “And to know that all of the funds raised here go to benefiting an organization like CCARC, which is such a staple in our community, is great. They’ve been a shining light in our community for many years, so to have a presence downtown and to get people that are in their programming ready to work and teaching them work skills is really important for their development as well so I hope everyone will come down and check them out.”

The shop was made possible through a grant from the Community Chest of New Britain and Berlin.

“The Community Chest has always thought very highly of CCARC and when they reached out to us with the grant application it was a no brainer for the board to sit down and say yes,” said Bob Trojanowski, vice president of finance for the Community Foundation. “The store is wonderful. Everything is very reasonably priced.”

“This all originated with the idea it’s a kaleidoscope, an image in our logo. Something beautiful, it just kind of shows how if you look at a kaleidoscope it’s a bunch of broken pieces or plastic, but when you look through the right lens you see the design,” said Dawn D’Amato, vice president of development CCARC. “It’s people with disabilities, it’s people giving to this shop, it’s people shopping here; it’s adding to the New Britain community and it’s all together something beautiful.”

Something Beautiful is open Tuesday-Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.