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Superpower Launchpad
Howell Street Holdings Company Superpower Incubator
This site is under construction. Howell Street Holdings is an incubator for businesses that employ People of Determination and those who appreciate them. Finding and fostering specific areas of excellence and providing environments where those "superpowers" can be maximized and capitalized upon, we're partnering with families to unleash the sleeping giant of ability within this large and productive segment of society. Meanwhile we're retaining and building dignity, inclusiveness, enjoying humanity, living and laughing together and marveling at how well designed is each one of us.
A writer for Hillsdale College's newspaper, The Collegian's Carly Moran, just did us a great favor and printed an article about our first business efforts, Knowledge Emporium (www.facebook.com/theknowledgeemporiumonhowell) and Sempre Pizza, Etc. Her article was in dire need of an edit, and, being in her great debt for this effort, I've taken the action of doing it and posting it here for posterity, as edited, including a link to the paper's treatment.
The Collegian (As edited by David Hambleton)
(https://hillsdalecollegian.com/2022/02/family-to-open-new-businesses-downtown-seeks-to-help-those-with-disabilities/)
Family to open new businesses downtown, seeks to help those with special abilities
By Carly Moran February 24, 2022
Two new businesses geared toward celebrating people with learning differences will open in downtown Hillsdale, MI.
The Hambleton family has registered Howell Street Holdings Company, LLC, (www.howellstreetholdings.com) which will be opening The Knowledge Emporium (www.facebook.com/theknowledgeemporiumonhowell), a homeschool curriculum consignment center and Teacher’s Resource store, in May, and Sempre Pizza Etc., a restaurant, possibly as early as the fall at numbers 12 and 14 South Howell Street.
The first business to open, The Knowledge Emporium, will both be run by and will cater toward special and differently-gifted learners, according to the owner David Hambleton.
“We’ll have the storefront with a seating area where hopefully it can be a social place where folks come by and hang out,” Hambleton said. “We can learn together. We have a couple of booths there for tutoring, and those will open up into a classroom so that if a group of homeschoolers wants to do a math class or a science seminar, we can entertain a small group for that sort of thing.”
Hambleton said they plan to consolidate the costs of maintaining a brick-and-mortar building with an online store for their curriculum.
“We’ve home schooled overseas. You buy one thing here, one thing there: you’re paying atrocious fees for shipping,” Hambleton said. “So what we’ll do is we’ll be a receiving point, packer, and shipper for the international customers. I think there’ll be a better income stream between that and internet sales than our little brick and mortar, in and out the front door can produce here in Hillsdale, no matter how great the need. There is not another Teacher’s Resource this side of Troy, but the internet allows us to reach more and fill more needs than are right here in our home town.”
Sempre Pizzeria Etc. plans to hire several people with specialized abilities to help run the business, Hambleton said. “We call them People of Determination, a term we borrowed from the United Arab Emirates. They are not less than or dis-anything. They tend to be more determined and to have certain things at which they excel. We want to find and help develop some amazing pizza chefs!”
“Other organizations are finding out that hiring autistic people is a great business venture. It’s a matter of having roles and positions for them to do,” Hambleton said. “The Mossad is hiring autistic people for their specific and very special talents and abilities. We’re not The Mossad, though Howell Street Holdings is a superpower incubator that will open and run businesses where peoples’ special purpose, special talents and interests can be optimized.”
”Sempre Pizza will be a brick oven pizzeria with woodfired pizza,” Hambleton said. “We’re going to offer about four items on the main pizza menu; a very simple menu. For those who know the company, In-N-Out Burger is kind of our business model.”
The parents plan on employing their older children at the businesses, alongside other adults with specialized abilities, Hambleton said.
“I sit on the board of Key Opportunities in town, and that’s not a required connection. It just is an interesting one. I’m tied to a community of a whole lot of folks that makes me think we’re not unique in my house at all. There are lots of people who need work,” Hambleton said.
According to Executive Director of Key Opportunities Julie Boyce, the two new businesses will make all the difference.
“Our primary mission is to train and employ, so having the opportunity to work with Mr. Hambleton is going to be a great opportunity to have another place to apply and look for job opportunities,” Boyce said.
Key Opportunities is a local charity specializing in training and finding jobs for adults with developmental disabilities, according to their website.
Hambleton said their two new businesses on Howell Street will serve as an extension from Key Opportunities’ mission. “We’re not affiliated, but we will be a potential employer for folks from Key Opportunities’ programs.”
“We’re painfully aware there’s a rift; there’s like two different economies in town. There is one economy where folks are from established good families and/or come to town for the school or business and have lots of choices and options in life. Then there are so many of our neighbors whose money runs out far before the month does, and they work entirely too hard for a buck. There is a lot of misunderstanding between these crowds of great people. It seems we all want America to be her best and people to do well. I moved my family here to be near the school, to help in its mission. I’m also a welder’s son from Minnesota, so local residents are my kind of people. So how do we serve them? Running the business, I’m not gonna call it noblesse oblige, but it’s whatever I can do to make this a better place for the school and the folks in the town to coexist and flourish together,” Hambleton said.
Seven out of the eight children in the Hambleton family are on the autism spectrum, Hambleton said, the family stays involved in the community.
David and Cassie Hambleton’s children are just as busy as they are: four sons are medalists in the Special Olympics, and their elder daughters' academic achievements are many and exceptionally highly-pronounced. These are proud parents. These are individual accomplished people with distinct achievements, not anybody's charity cases, and they enjoy contributing to society each in their own way.
Hambleton said Hillsdale College students can give back to the community too.
“Don’t let your volunteerism end at the requirement,” Hambleton said. “Use it as a springboard.”
Hambleton said the two businesses are very different, but both will serve the community.
Hambleton said he does not like the term, disabilities. People with brain differences are not less but often more able to participate in the community than others.
“I’m a rugged individualist, I believe very much in our community being able to do incredible things. The whole idea that ‘these people’, a whole thoughtful, beautiful, and potentially-productive-but-grossly-underappreciated LARGE segment of our society are supposed to go get an SSI Card and sit, vegetate, watch a movie or play a game, and be happy and out of the way is so reprehensible to me,” Hambleton said. “Let’s get to work!”
Contact Howell Street Holdings Company, LLC.
Address: 12 S. Howell St. Hillsdale, MI 49242
Phone: 5172342250
Email: david@howellstreetholdings.com