OAKLAND — When the Lions Center for the Blind of Oakland closes as expected Wednesday because of funding challenges, San Francisco’s LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired will immediately be able to serve the East Bay clients the Lions Center is losing.

“We’ve already served a ton of people in Alameda County,” LightHouse CEO Bryan Bashin said. “We now made the strategic decision where we have the resources and we can make sure the blind people in the East Bay don’t have to suffer and don’t have to deal with the chaos of a change in services.”

While the Lions Center is expected to close its doors in downtown Oakland, the LightHouse will open its expanded services center at the Ed Roberts Campus on top of Ashby BART station in Berkeley. LightHouse will offer the blind and visually impaired employment, and “the highest of high tech” technology skills and mobility training, Bashin said.

LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired is a 114-year-old institution and one of the largest philanthropies in the Bay Area, Bashin said. While it is based in San Francisco — and just opened a new facility on Market Street three months ago — Bashin said because the population of San Francisco is only 10 percent of the Bay Area population, it was always natural to serve East Bay clients as well. It has satellite locations in San Rafael and Eureka, and a summer camp. It even prints a tactile map of Burning Man for the blind so they can use it during this week’s festival.

“Our interest here is that we want to see blind people served without chaos or interruption,” Bashin said. The expanded center in Berkeley is a bit larger than 4,000 square feet and will increase LightHouse’s service of about 3,000 annually by 10 percent.

“We think we can easily take care of the people the Lions Center was serving,” Bashin said. Many of the Lions Center instructors have applied for jobs at LightHouse, he added.

LightHouse board President Chris Downey, an architect who lost his sight less than a decade ago and used LightHouse services to acclimate to his new visually impaired world, said while he’s disappointed the Lions Center for the Blind has to close, he’s grateful LightHouse can be there for its clients.

“We can immediately offer services … living skills, Braille, adaptive technology,” he said, adding that LightHouse’s current instructors can hop on BART from the new downtown San Francisco facility and get to the expanded Berkeley campus in 20 minutes. “It just happens to be good timing. We’re in, we’re ready, we’re expanding. It’s very positive.”

Lions Center for the Blind appealed to the public this summer to help the organization raise $500,000 so it could stay open through the end of the year. Their GoFundMe fundraising web page raised just under $3,000 of that $500,000 goal.

Maureen Powers, Lions Center for the Blind board president, said she’s aware that the LightHouse Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired just received a huge bequest which not only allowed it to expand but will prevent worry about funding in the future.

“That’s great,” she said. “We’re glad they’re doing that.”

The Lions Center for the Blind, however, is not completely folding. It is working with clients to make placements in LightHouse and other centers because, Powers said, every client should have a choice of where to go.

Lions Center enter also anticipates having some money to operate, she said, but its leaders don’t know exactly how much so the center can’t promise service just yet. Powers said the center is making arrangements for some orientation, assistive technology and older client care to be taken on by another organization in the East Bay that is not LightHouse.

Former students of the Lions Center for the Blind are welcome to continue their studies at any LightHouse facility. To make arrangements, contact LightHouse Rehabilitation counselors at 415-694-7357.