SPRINGFIELD - Artwain Davis tore apart a restaurant booth bench Wednesday morning at the Wellspring Upholstery Cooperative and at the same time put together not only a career for himself but a business that promises to train and employ others in Springfield's South End.

"It just goes to show that there are jobs out there," Davis, 22, said. "There are opportunities out there if you keep working."

His work was interrupted as reporters and local officials toured the Wellspring workshop at 141-143 Main St., for the organization's grand opening. it's located in the same building as Corporate Design NE and The Design Center NE, two interior decorating and design business that help drive traffic to the upholstery business.

The building was once Bemis & Call Co., home of the original monkey wrench.

Wellspring is founded as a co-op where employees like Davis will have an opportunity to become worker-owners after a year on the job, said Fred Rose, a visiting faculty member at the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst..

Organizers bankrolled Wellspring with $200,000 in grant money awarded Partners for a Healthier Community by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and other capital form Springfield employers including Baystate Health , Rose said.

An economist by training, Rose said Wellspring and cooperatives like it are an increasingly popular way to develop business in hard-hit and economically undeserved communities. Wellspring will also supply large Springfield employers, companies that now spend less than 10 percent of their purchasing dollars for goods and services in Springfield.

"It's a business where there is a demand," Rose said. "And now it is a business that is rooted to the community with the workers. It isn't going anywhere."

There are three employees now making $11 an hour. Rose said he hopes to double that number to six by the end of the year and hopefully push it to a dozen sometime in 2015. Some employees are refereed by the Hampden County Sheriff's Department and its jail vocational training program : York Street Industries.



Since starting up work in December 2013, Wellspring has done upholstering work for the UMass Berkshire Dining Commons, said Evan Cohen, manager of the upholstery shop. They also did chairs for the mayor's office and a conference room at Westfield City Hall as part of a recently completed renovation.

"We'll do more work for Berkshire Dining Commons this summer," he said adding that they'll take customers off the street as well.

Cohen, a master upholsterer with more than 40 years of service, co-located his business, Alliance Upholstery, with Wellspring and the two business help each other.

"I'm here to teach the craft," Cohen said. "I'm here to manage the work and make sure it gets done. I manage the supplies."

Wellspring hopes to branch out into other cooperative enterprises such as a greenhouse

.