Blind Duluth entrepreneur opens hospitality-first wellness collective downtown

Elaine Bell is preparing to open a downtown Duluth wellness business built as much on accessibility as on technique. The Beyond Gold Wellness Collective is set for a May 8 grand opening at 395 S. Lake Ave., Suite 2, in the city’s Waterfront District, where Bell wants clients to feel cared for, pampered and unhurried.

Bell has spent six years working as a massage therapist, first opening Range Medical Massage in June 2020 before closing it about a year later and rethinking how she wanted to serve clients. Her new business reflects that reset. Bell, who lost her vision when she was three weeks old, has said she has spent much of her life proving wrong the people who told her beauty work or business ownership would not be realistic for her.

The launch also shows how much of a blind entrepreneur’s success can depend on practical adaptation. Bell’s husband has helped make changes whenever something in the space did not work, including replacing inaccessible tools, switching booking systems and relying on an older iPhone with VoiceOver. Apple says VoiceOver is built into iPhone, iPad and Mac, giving users spoken feedback and gesture-based navigation. For Bell, that kind of built-in accessibility is part of the daily infrastructure that lets her run appointments and communicate with clients.

Bell said she can perform massage and facial services without issue once the setup is right, a reminder that disability often creates barriers in the environment, not in the work itself. That matters in Duluth and across St. Louis County, where massage therapy is not licensed at the state level but cities and counties may impose their own business requirements. For an independent operator, the path to opening can hinge on local licensing, business registration and space design just as much as on skill.

The broader support system in Minnesota includes State Services for the Blind, which offers assistive technology services and a Business Enterprises Program for qualified blind Minnesotans. Bell’s business is not part of that program, but her launch underscores the value of that wider network for entrepreneurs navigating vision loss, training and workplace access.

Downtown Duluth’s Waterfront District stretches across 90 blocks of retail, restaurants, lodging and attractions, and Bell’s business joins a growing mix of locally owned services there. The Downtown Duluth member directory lists The Lighthouse Spa at the same address, with a phone number of (218) 349-0891 and thelighthousespa.com, pointing to a wellness corridor that already includes massage and self-care offerings. Bell’s opening adds another locally owned business to that cluster and offers a concrete example of how adaptive design and client trust can create a viable model downtown.