Public Employee Press

Expert makeover:
Local 375 members bring pride of craft to design and construction project
at Nontraditional Employment for Women

By JANE LaTOUR

Up until 1966, the historic building at 243 West 20th St. was home to a fire station.

Next, the city-owned building became a women’s liberation center, and in the early 1980s, Nontraditional Employment for Women set up its program on the premises.

NEW, the premier recruitment and training program for women entering skilled blue-collar jobs, had to keep functioning even as construction took place. Every six weeks, a new round of young women begins the program. Upon graduation they are on the threshold to a new future — one that features a union card in a skilled trade apprenticeship program.

The challenges of renovating this building were huge. Every aspect of the plans for the project had to incorporate the historic nature of the building, dating back to the 1870s.

Construction Project Managers Said Daryani, Michael Kenny, Alexander Novik, and John Romanowich made up the team from the Dept. of Design and Construction, and Assistant Engineer Yuen Wong was on board to work on the plans as they were submitted to the Dept. of Citywide Administrative Services. A specialist was brought in to ensure that the brick and mortar matched the soft substance of the original mortar.

“The project lasted seven months,” Kenny said. “We started in September and renovated all the parapets on the roof. We repaired the façade and did a complete pointing of the exterior of the building. The copper skylight is also a period piece.”

While so many details went into getting everything properly installed and perfectly matched to the historic quality of the building, the biggest challenge was carrying out a construction job as daily life unfolded within the building itself and for its neighbors.

“We had to coordinate everything with the clients,” explained Novik, a native of the Ukraine and anexperienced craftsman. “All of the credit should go to the head project manager, Said Daryani.”

Daryani, a Local 375 member, has been with the DDC for 15 years. “This program at NEW is a wonderful opportunity for women to gain entry into a part of the construction industry which historically had been closed to females,” he said. Romanowich seconded that opinion.

History succeeded in weaving its way throughout the renovation—even as the women going through the program offered by NEW continue to break the concrete ceiling. “This is why I love my job,” Kenny said. “We get to leave the city a little bit better on every job.”

The program at NEW was covered on NBC Nightly News on May 18, and featured Plumbers Local Union 1 apprentice Tamara Grant, on the job at Yankee Stadium, and was featured again in the New York Post on June 9.