G.T.S.’s Tutu Center to give jobs to local youths

By Lawrence Lerner

Fulton Houses Tenants Association Vice-President Miguel Acevedo has been lobbying for neighborhood jobs for years. He moved one step closer to that goal recently when the General Theological Seminary pledged to hire area youths to work in its soon-to-open Desmund Tutu Education Center.

On Tuesday night, he moved closer still, when G.T.S. made its employment plans public at the Business Licenses & Permits Committee meeting of Community Board 4. The seminary, which appeared before the committee to apply for a liquor license for the center, pleasantly surprised the board members with the additional news.

“That certainly was a nice positive, especially given the citywide unemployment figures for youths out of high school,” said Committee Chairperson Lisa Daglian.

G.T.S. officials, along with representatives from Aramark Harrison Lodging, which has been contracted by the seminary to manage the Tutu Center’s hospitality operations, said they hoped to fill at least 30 percent of the center’s laborer jobs with kids from Acevedo’s Fulton Youth for the Future group, a three-year-old initiative run out of Fulton Houses that helps underserved kids, single mothers and people looking for affordable housing.

According to Maureen Burnley, G.T.S.’s executive vice president for finance and operations, filling 100 percent of the jobs with area youth would be optimal.

“Aramark is a very progressive company who gets our mission. Though they’ll probably fill most management jobs from within, some could go to local folks if they qualify,” she said. “But we’ve asked them to fill as many of these slots as possible with neighborhood kids. The Tutu Center is part of the community, and we want to produce opportunities for the community.”
Burnley also emphasized that Aramark has agreed to pay any local workers G.T.S.’s standard minimum wage, which at $10 an hour is far higher than that mandated by the state.

“We were clear about this with Aramark when we screened them almost four years ago. They agreed with us on that, and that benefits, including health insurance and vacation for full-time employees, should also be part of the package,” she said. “This is what we do at the seminary. It’s not a big deal for us. We just needed to find a company whose employment practices were aligned with ours.”

According to to Chris Ballard, G.T.S.’s community outreach coordinator, the seminary will work closely with Acevedo to find kids to fill the slots, which would run the gamut from kitchen, busboy and server help to room service and maintenance positions. G.T.S. will collect applications from Acevedo and set the kids up with interviews with representatives from Aramark, who will ultimately do the hiring.

After the jobs get filled this summer and the Tutu Center opens in September, G.T.S. plans also on bringing Acevedo’s kids into an internship program run by Aramark. The objective: to help youth learn and develop careers in the hospitality business. According to Ballard, the seminary is in a good place to make that happen.

“We employ some of Miguel’s kids at the seminary during the summer, doing yard work, painting and other things. Miguel has the machinery in place with his group, and Aramark has an intership program in place already,” he said. “It all makes sense, and we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

In time, he said, the lines between G.T.S. and Aramark will become more defined, and he expects that Aramark will take over recruitment and deal directly with Acevedo.

Acevedo is happy to see G.T.S. stepping up.

“It feels good. Very, very good,” he said. “We have a lot of folks who don’t want to be on public assistance who will now get an opportunity to get off of it. That’s a great thing. It’s only positive.”

Meanwhile, G.T.S. not only delivered good news at Tuesday’s C.B. 4 committee meeting but got some of its own when the committee voted unanimously to approve its liquor license for the Tutu Center. According to Daglian, the discussion didn’t take long.

“Aramark is well-known, and there were no questions or concerns outstanding, really, except we wanted to make sure the noise level would meet community standards, and G.T.S. assured us they would,” she said. “The seminary needs this license to keep doing what they’ve done in the past in a more sophisticated and elegant way. And we gave them our full support.”

G.T.S. applied for the comprehensive liquor license—which allows the seminary to serve all types of alcoholic beverages—because, as Burnley put it, “folks having conferences at the Tutu Center will most likely want liquor.” The plan is for the dining center to serve it with meals, though Burnley said there would be no liquor during breakfasts, and that there will not be a bar.

“This is the same arrangement that other Aramark clients have, including NYU, I’m guessing,” said Burnley.

When pressed about how she felt about getting through that hoop, she was terse about the matter, saying only: “We got liquor license. I’m pleased. We’re appreciative of the unanimous vote from C.B. 4.”