Residents Line Up Early for First Day of Services at the Opportunities Center (2/1/2010)

Residents Line Up Early for First Day of Services at the Opportunities Center for Federal Construction Jobs, Training, & Small Business Contracts

February 1, 2010

WASHINGTON, DC - The office of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today said 200 men and women began lining up at 6 a.m. for the first day of service at the new Opportunities Center on the St. Elizabeths west campus, at 2701 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, SE, Gate 2, where the new U.S. Department of Homeland Security headquarters compound is in the early stages of construction. The Opportunities Center opened for service at 8 a.m., with General Services Administration employees on site to help applicants identify jobs, training, and business opportunities, and complete applications.

William Douglas McGowens, a D.C. laborer, was the first to enter the Opportunities Center and complete an application. Scheduled activities by contractors, trainers, and the community begin at the Center on Thursday, February 4, at 3pm, with an Opportunities Fair for trucking companies to meet and learn from successful subcontracting trucking companies and to discuss potential future opportunities for earthwork and site demolition at the St. Elizabeths site. The ground-breaking at the St. Elizabeths site occurred only recently and a small number of jobs are available now, but 38,000 jobs are expected to be created during a decade of construction of the three-building compound.