Minority Hiring Picks Up At Q House

Four local African American-owned contractors recently landed work at the Q House construction site, bringing the project’s share of subcontracting work awarded to Black-owned businesses past the city’s 10 percent goal, for now.

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn gave that update Monday evening during a virtual meeting of the Q House Advisory Board. The group met online via the the Zoom videoconferencing platform.

Zinn said that, roughly 40 percent of the way through the construction of the new community center at 197 Dixwell Ave., around 10 percent of subcontracts on the $16 million-plus overall project have been won by African American-owned businesses.

That means that Black-owned contractors are slated to bring home at least $1.7 million by the time the two-story youth, health, and senior center is done in April 2021.

Click here to watch a video recording of Monday’s meeting. The password for the video is VQx%Dz1d.

The update came one month after Q House Advisory Board members and local African American contractors laid into the city and the project’s Branford-based general contractor, A. Secondino & Son, for the relatively low share of construction work at the site going to Black-owned businesses and Black workers. It also comes amidst broader citywide debates inside and outside City Hall around how best to ensure that local African American and Hispanic construction workers and companies benefit from local building work.

Despite the extensive outreach efforts described in this 503-page document Zinn submitted to the board in June, African American-owned businesses made up only 9 percent of the project’s subcontractor work and Black workers made up less than 8 percent of the workforce as of last month.

Zinn said those numbers are looking a bit better now — and have met the minority hiring goals as laid out in the city’s Chapter 12 ½ and 12 ¼ ordinances — thanks to the recent hiring of New Haven-based, African American-owned contractors Green Elm, Providence Install, New Haven Firestop, and A‑Plus.

“Your discussion last month with the general contractor lit even more of a fire under them, and I think that was effective in pushing some of this along,” Zinn told the board members

As of right now, he said, 10 percent of subcontractors on the project are African American-owned businesses, 6 percent are Hispanic-owned businesses, and 17 percent are women-owned businesses. He also said that 9 percent of the overall construction workforce (as measured by work hours by ethnicity) is African American, and 47 percent of the total workforce is Black or Hispanic.

“The numbers you’re giving us are floor levels,” said Q House board member Dottie Green. ​“That’s the absolute minimum. So I’m hoping that there will be continued efforts to increase the number of minority contractors as well as to increase the number of minority workers.”

Zinn (pictured) described in detail the construction work to be performed by the recent hires.

Green Elm, which is run by Dixwell-based contractor Rodney Williams, will be starting as soon as Wednesday on exterior sheeting work at the site, Zinn said.

Providence Install will be doing ductwork. New Haven Firestop Systems, run by New Havener Robert Walker, will be doing all of the mechanical firestopping for the project. And A‑Plus will be doing the mechanical pipe insulation in the building.

He said those four subcontracts are worth upwards of $200,000.

Zinn also said that a New Haven-based, Hispanic-owned business called Affordable Glass has been hired to construct the building’s sunshades as part of a subcontract with the main glass installer for the project. He said that sunshade subcontract is worth roughly $84,000.

Zinn said several more local minority-owned businesses are teed up to win other remaining work.

An African American-owned business is close to signing a subcontract for roughly $250,000 worth of interior wall assembly work at the site, he said; another African American-owned business is close to signing a roughly $60,000 subcontract for exterior and interior calking work.

Zinn said there’s plenty more work left to bid for around acoustical ceilings, concrete flatwork and pavings, and tiles.

The city engineer said that going through this process of searching for, and struggling to hire, New Haven-based, minority-owned contractors has spurred the city to look into developing new hiring pipelines for minority subcontractors and workers alike.

“The train is moving fast,” warned advisory board member Sean Reeves. He urged Zinn and the city to keep up the pressure on the general contractor to hire and finalize agreements with minority contractors as soon as possible so they don’t miss out on work needed to complete this project at the heart of New Haven’s historically African American epicenter.

Fellow advisory board member Malcolm Welfare encouraged Zinn to tap existing construction workforce pipelines in the city, like Career Tech Pathways, when looking for skilled and capable Black and brown construction workers for projects like this.

“There have been many apprenticeship programs in the past, he said, ​“and I definitely think we should learn from those programs and those mistakes. But also, we have to pull from trade programs already existing.”

After the meeting, Rodney Williams called the new small contracts just a drop in the bucket of what needs to be done, in terms of the work that Black contractors are capable of doing.

“We’re getting snacks. Everybody else is getting meals,” Williams said. ​“Don’t give us false hope.”

As for overall timeline for the project, Zinn said that the Q House likely won’t be done until late April or early May 2021 — pushed back from the previous goal date of early April 2021. That’s because the Covid-19 pandemic has delayed existing work long enough that the final paving work likely won’t be done by this Fall. Since paving is not done during the winter, and the paving plants reopen April 15, that paving won’t take place until soon after then.