FARMINGTON – A community. Full, structured days. A sense of purpose.

The thrift shop Touch of Class on Route 4 not only sells quality inexpensive clothing to folks in the community – it employs and works with adults with developmental disabilities, too.

They need work, structure, friends and cash flow just like anybody else, Linda LaRue-Keniston said Friday. Executive Director of Work First Inc., the nonprofit organization that runs Touch of Class as a shop, experiential learning center, recycling depot and employer of folks with developmental disabilities, LaRue knows what she’s talking about.

Now, with the shop expanding into the building going up rapidly on Route 4 just beyond Hannaford in Farmington, she hopes the organization can expand all the services Touch of Class currently offers. Shopping included.

The current building is overflowing with donations of clothing, shoes, purses and housewares, LaRue-Keniston said Friday. People in Farmington have been extremely generous, she said. Hardly a day goes by without four or five new bags of clothes.

So instead of finding their way onto the floor to be bought up quickly, many of the clothes wait in the wings until clear space is found in the large retail area.

The serious space crunch in the current building should be a nonissue in the one going up now, which is expected to be finished by late December, LaRue-Keniston said. It’ll have about double the square-footage, she said.

Christmas decorations, ice skates, winter hats and mittens and loads of warm, puffy jackets had found their way onto the sales floor of Touch of Class on Friday. Consumers, as the more than 80 folks who receive services at Work First are called, had just finished their workday. The clothing they had sorted, pressed, hung and tagged was out on the floor or waiting in the wings.

Consumers love the work, Touch of Class manager Lynne Hall said. “They get upset when there’s a storm day called,” she said.

“It gives these guys a purpose,” Briana Kenney added.

The nonprofit hopes to add another 10-15 consumers to the 20 currently on the Touch of Class payroll at some point after the expansion, according to a statement.

The hope is that the added space will help consumers, Work First staff, and the community, LaRue Keniston explained.

In the early afternoon Friday, 62 year-old David Skillings hung one last piece of clothing before leaving for lunch. Skillings doesn’t talk much, Hall said, but he expresses himself clearly, even so. He smiled and gestured his happiness at his job, the new building. “He is an excellent hanger,” Hall said. “And he’s quite a perfectionist at what he does.”