Rec center projects deliver broader amenities, more beautiful buildings

Gone are the days when a community recreation center was a basic building, a gym and a ballfield.

Today’s rec center projects involve a mix of high-quality athletic facilities with space for creative activities, high-tech activities, public meetings, performances, food preparation and support services. They feature artful facades, welcoming interiors, high-performance systems and custom designs. Yet they are still delivered with limited budgets, broad stakeholder groups and often on distressed sites.

They are projects that require a high level of ingenuity but deliver big benefits to the communities they serve.

Last fall, AIA Maryland named the Middle Branch Fitness and Wellness Center as the 2024 Public Building of the Year while AIA Baltimore named the center as winner of its Social Equity Award. The project team included BC&E members Alliance Exterior Construction, GWWO Architects, Hatzel & Buehler, Ironshore Contracting, MK Consulting Engineers and The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.

Located on a former brownfield site, the center was designed to serve the distinct needs of the Cherry Hill neighborhood. The light-filled building includes a gymnasium, natatorium, indoor splash pad, fitness area, multipurpose studio, maker space, classroom and rooms for support services. Outside, the grounds include a turf field for football, lacrosse and soccer as well as an event lawn and a connection to the 15-mile Gwynns Falls Trail.

To maximize the center’s facilities and usefulness, GWWO Architects designed the building to minimize non-program space and support multiple and changing uses in different areas.

For Middle Branch and a previous project (Cahill Fitness and Wellness Center in Baltimore), “we basically worked to eliminate circulation space,” said John Gregg, Principal at GWWO. “There aren’t corridors. The workout facilities are incorporated into the lobby and into the circulation. The multi-purpose spaces are made as multi-use and flexible as possible.”

The Cahill project team included BC&E members Cole Roofing, GWWO Architects and MK Consulting Engineers.

However, the success of those projects “is really not only about the design,” Gregg said. “It’s about engaging the community.”

Extensive community sessions educated the project team about residents’ distinct needs and desires for a recreation center. They also convinced some understandably skeptical residents of underserved communities that their voices would be heard and acted on.

Ultimately, that produced changes and unique additions to the designs. At Cahill, designers added a large auditorium/performance space.

At Middle Branch, “a bright red, indoor walking track became an integral part of the design,” Gregg said. “It’s something that facility has that other recreation centers in the city don’t. But residents said they needed a walking track and they wanted it to be indoors. We were able to address that community need without a significant increase in cost.”

Other recreation center projects present different needs and desires.

In West Baltimore, a proposal to renovate the aging and underutilized Hilton Recreation Center mushroomed into a major, multi-sponsor redevelopment plan.

It started nearly six years ago when former Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith and his wife, Chanel, began looking for a site to provide youth programming through their LEVEL82 organization. Since then, the initiative has attracted support from city and state governments as well as a roster of local philanthropists.

Based on the nature and needs of the community, the plan expanded into a major renovation that will create a multi-purpose athletic field (which will also serve the adjacent Green Street Academy), a teen lounge, gymnasium, art room, technology room, tutoring spaces, indoor-outdoor community gathering spaces, and a kitchen that will intersect with Green Street Academy’s urban agriculture program and support food insecurity efforts in the area.

When the project team finishes construction later this year, the new facility will be known as the Baltimore Ravens Boys & Girls Club at Hilton Recreation Center. That team includes The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, MK Consulting Engineers, Ariosa & Company, Windsor Electric and Design Collective.

“A unique feature of this recreation center is it will not only serve the community, but also support the adjacent high school,” said Scott Vieth, Principal at Design Collective.

And despite the major involvement of the Ravens, “it can’t be all about sports,” said Matt Herbert, Principal at Design Collective. “It has to support the kids and the community in many other activities.”

Consequently, the design went through many iterations to meet that broad range of activities and to ensure the space can adapt to changing uses in future, Herbert said.

Built-in technology and tech spaces, for example, are designed to support the TikTok generation and adapt to whatever comes next.

“There are rooms that are specially treated for sound and lighting for content generation for social media,” Herbert said. “People from the Boys & Girls Club and Green Street Academy recognized that this is another way for kids to find what they want to do and there are entrepreneurial aspects to it, and you can’t be closed minded about those activities.”

In the midst of the litany of program requirements, current recreation center projects are also delivering superb aesthetics.

The new Hilton center will include “a lot of color and branding and really cool graphics,” Vieth said. “But it is probably the gymnasium that is going to wow people the most. They are going to walk into this brand new, giant gymnasium that is flooded with daylight. There are windows up high but there are also big, lower windows that look out onto the field.”

In East Baltimore, a project team that includes BC&E members CAM Construction, Coastal Exteriors, GWWO Architects and MK Consulting Engineers is currently working on the renovation and expansion of the Chick Webb Memorial Recreation Center. Dedicated to legendary jazz drummer and bandleader, William Henry “Chick” Webb, the original 1947 facility was the first rec center and pool built for African Americans in the city.

The two-story addition plus renovated space will create a modern gymnasium, natatorium, fitness/wellness spaces, a makerspace, teen lounge, walking/running track, historical displays about Webb’s career and a “Founder’s Recording Studio.” It will also add a gorgeous building to the neighborhood.

To honor both the history of the building and Webb’s legacy, the new façade will feature modern limestone panels and fenestration that reflect the style of the original, mid-century building. The design of the entryway will evoke both the pattern of a musical scale and the palette of Webb’s colorful drum kits.

At Middle Branch, design decisions created beauty inside and out. The elevated, indoor, walking track was aligned with the building’s glazing to provide walkers with broad views of the neighborhood and the waterfront beyond.

Outside, the façade featured “a checkerboard pattern of Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) in shades of gray and beige that are bordered with red ACM panels to accentuate different architectural features,” said Skutch Montgomery, Director of Sales and Estimating at Alliance Exterior Construction.

Alliance, he added, has seen the rise in aesthetic standards for recreation centers.

“About 25 years ago, we built the original Essex Community College pool and we’re still really proud of that original project,” Montgomery said.

But a few years ago, Alliance Exterior Construction was part of the project team that transformed the building into the CCBC Wellness Center. That renovation and addition included UHPC rainscreen panels on the exterior.

“For the original Essex Community College Pool, we did a custom tapered seam with TPO roofing membrane to make it look like a standing seam roof and that was the extent of any flashiness,” he said. “For the new addition, we installed an angular roof and a canopy that juts out from the building and creates a very welcoming entry. And we installed a textured UHPC skin on the building that blends into the original brick. It’s gorgeous.”

Amid the drive to deliver more amenities and better aesthetics on limited budgets and pressing timelines, some recreation center projects are also embracing less than conventional building processes and materials, Plano-Coudon Construction is preparing to break ground in February on a 14,000-square-foot addition to the Bocek Recreation Center in Baltimore. The $11.1 million project will create a new indoor fitness area and gymnasium, add an outdoor basketball court and fitness area, and outfit the building with sustainable features, including rooftop solar.

“One of the most impressive aspects of this project is the design, fabrication and installation of the pre-engineered metal building (PEMB),” said Darryl Richardson, Project Executive with Plano Coudon. “PEMBs allow for a faster ground-up installation compared to traditional steel structures, making them an efficient solution for recreation center development.”

Port faces prospects of more cargo and two mega projects

Market trends and some proposed developments are raising hopes of more construction activity stemming from port operations.

In January, Tradepoint Atlantic launched into a public comment period for its plan to build at $1 billion container terminal on a 130-acre site on Coke Point. The joint venture, by Tradepoint Atlantic and Terminal Investment Limited, a subsidiary of Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), could dramatically change the amount of cargo moving through Baltimore.

“This would be huge for Baltimore,” said Aaron Tomarchio, Tradepoint’s Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs. “This would bring Baltimore up from number six in container capacity among East Coast ports to number three. Baltimore would be playing with the big boys and girls.”

For the construction industry, that could have several impacts.

If approved, construction of the container terminal could start by the end of this year and continue through to the first quarter of 2028, supporting approximately 1,100 construction jobs.

The new terminal, which is being designed to maximize the efficiency of container-handling operations, would attract more shipping to and from Baltimore by MSC (the largest shipping company in the world) and other companies, Tomarchio said.

That increased traffic would drive up demand for warehouse/distribution space.

Tradepoint Atlantic, which has already built 15 million square feet of Class A logistics facilities on its Sparrows Point property, has capacity to build another 6 million square feet of industrial property.

Increased port traffic would also likely spur “inland port projects,” such as other warehouse/distribution facilities along the I-95 corridor and nearby, Tomarchio said.

Port-related construction, however, already seems poised to experience some growth, independent of any decision about the Tradepoint container terminal.

WBCM Construction Services just landed a $9 million, 12-month contract to build a bulk material handling facility on a finger pier at Tradepoint Atlantic, said Mike Baker, President.

“There’s a lot of terminal work happening locally and in other states, and it seems to be picking up,” Baker said. “I don’t know if that’s part of the push to bring more manufacturing back to the States and the need to bring in more raw materials, but we’re getting a lot of leads from around the country for projects that are upgrading terminals.”

Designed to handle gypsum, salt, sand, gravel and other building materials, many projects are adding more automation to ship offloading “so they can get materials off the piers quicker and turn the ships around a lot quicker,” Baker said.

Meanwhile, commercial real estate and logistics company Prologis recently released a projection that the Port of Baltimore, which saw little growth in cargo traffic in 2024, should experience a 25 percent increase this year.

In its regular report about Maryland’s industrial real estate market released in January, CBRE noted that industrial property construction has finally risen back to its pre-pandemic pace after a distinct slowdown in 2024.

“The industrial development pipeline is still robust with 2.8 million square feet under construction [in Central Maryland] and expected to deliver through the first quarter of 2026,” CBRE concluded.

Finally, the Maryland Board of Public Works awarded a key, early contract in the plan to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The $75 million general engineering consultant services contract went to Bridging Maryland Partnership, a joint venture of WSP, RK&K and JMT.

The partnership will help the Maryland Transportation Authority ensure the project’s accelerated design and construction process remains on track and audit processes with the bridge’s design-builder, Kiewit Infrastructure Co.

Project Profile: King Kia

In an era when consumers can easily buy cars by clicking a button on a website, aesthetics and functionality have become even more important to automobile dealerships.

“The industry is trying to attract people back into dealerships so they can have face-to-face interactions and show the bright finishes and car features,” said Scott Albright, Senior Vice President of MacKenzie Contracting Company.

A major renovation and expansion of King Kia in Laurel, designed by Flanagan Architects, created that contemporary standard of an attractive and highly functional dealership.

Built in the 1970s and altered with several, subsequent additions, the dealership was contending with some predictable challenges – an aging structure and building systems, cramped offices, inefficient storage, an outdated showroom and a customer lounge that was simply too dark.

Through a 24-week renovation of the 32,287-square-foot interior, MacKenzie upgraded the showroom with porcelain tile, top-grade LED lighting, new millwork and Kia-standard colors and finishes that are designed to convey the brand and impress customers.

Crews raised the low ceiling of a previous addition and outfitted the area with high-end carpet and glass partitions to create more pleasing office space. They reconfigured the parts department to support modern, efficient storage systems.

“We built a brand new break room and a new, beautiful customer lounge that has a coffee bar, credenzas, nice seating, music and comfortable places where people can wait for their cars to be serviced,” Albright said.

The service side of the dealership received a major upgrade through a 1,500-square-foot addition. The large, drive-through space is outfitted with automatic, roll-up doors and allows customers to drop off their cars in the comfort of an enclosed, conditioned area.

The project team upgraded the building’s mechanical and electrical systems, completed extensive roof work, and completely reskinned the building — an operation that included coordinating with Kia’s national installer of exterior metal panels.

The project had its challenges. Working on a 1970s building and its subsequent additions meant that crews had to address irregular and sometimes surprising placement of support beams and columns as they renovated spaces and brought the building up to current code.

The team also had to temporarily relocate King Kia’s staff into trailers in the parking lot — one each for offices, parts and customer service — as they completed major renovations inside the building.

“But it produced a tremendous transformation,” Albright said.

Dedicated volunteers prepare to complete SAFE Center

After four years of planning, building and overcoming challenges, the SAFE Center in one of the Baltimore’s most underserved communities is nearing completion.

A project of the nonprofit Safe Alternative Foundation for Education, the 3,200-square-foot center on South Payson Street will provide area teenagers and young adults with opportunities to explore career opportunities in construction, gain core skills and earn certifications in carpentry. The center has been designed to include a workshop and classroom space in order to deliver National Center for Construction Education (NCCER) accredited training programs in construction trades.

BC&E member companies, who have long supported the foundation’s after-school and young adult construction education programs, volunteered to help design, engineer and build the new center.

“This is the beauty of the BC&E. People totally rose to the occasion to support this project,” said John Stahl, former president of the BC&E Foundation and Vice President-Sales at Swirnow Building Systems. “Everybody stayed on top of the project. They figured things out and they got things done.”

That path has not been easy.

The project plan involves repurposing three vacant townhomes, including one that was converted into a carwash. The buildings were suffering from age and neglect. Several floors were not level and the ground floor of the former carwash had been sloped to allow water to drain. The second-story floors of the buildings did not align because the upper floor of the middle house had been pushed higher to accommodate the high bay of the carwash.

The initial group of BC&E members who visited the site, feared the only option would be to tear the rowhomes down.

However, GWWO Architects developed a plan to transform the space in order to keep costs down but still create the desired facilities.

In recent months, MK Consulting Engineers completed site work engineering to ensure that a ramp into the building could be properly graded and installed according to code. Excell Concrete Construction tackled the project’s exterior concrete requirements and Baltimore Fabrication crafted and installed the custom railing and canopy.

Inside, professionals from James Posey Associates, Hatzel & Buehler, Ariosa & Company and Temp Air Company have been designing and installing all new plumbing, heating, cooling, ventilation and electrical systems.

Cap Ex Advisory Group approached the project team and offered to help with permitting and project management for the partly volunteer construction effort.

In total, 15 BC&E member companies have committed to the project: Ariosa & Company, Baltimore Fabrication, Bunting Door and Hardware, Cap Ex Advisory Group, Excell Concrete, Floors Etc, GWWO Architects, Hatzel & Buehler, Henry J. Knott Masonry, James Posey and Associates, Leonard A. Kraus Co., MK Consulting Engineers, Swirnow Building Systems, Temp Air Company, and The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company.

“We appreciate that all these member firms committed to this project. It will benefit the community and the industry at the end of the day,” Stahl said.

Recently, the project secured the permit to proceed with the remaining interior work, Stahl said.

Based on that approval, the project team is now preparing to hold a grand opening in July.

To date, “we have been working on this project for four years and two months,” said Van Brooks, Founder and Executive Director of the Safe Alternative Foundation for Education. “But it is worth it.”

Brooks estimates that annually he will be able to provide four cohorts of 12 students, aged 18 to 24, with the training program that leads to a carpentry certification. In addition, the center will support the foundation’s summer, construction trades program for high school students which Brooks is currently expanding from a one-week training to a five-week course. It will also support the foundation’s after-school program, which enables middle school students to explore construction trades.

That array of programs can produce impressive results, Brooks said.

Some students from the foundation’s middle school program have gone on to enroll in high schools where they can complete a construction trades program. One former participant in the middle school program is currently a construction trades student at Carver High School and plans to return to the foundation to earn a carpentry certification through the SAFE Center, he said.

BCE Foundation awards grants to construction educators

The BC&E Foundation has awarded more than $22,000 in grants to nine local organizations to support their efforts to develop the next generation of construction craftspeople and professionals.

“We were able to distribute a meaningful amount of money,” said Foundation Board Member Curtis Dalsimer.

Faced with a strong roster of applicants, the grants committee met multiple times to assess and score each application.

“We gave the most weight to the organizations whose mission aligns with the mission of the Foundation — to grow the future construction workforce in the greater Baltimore area,” he said. “We gave the highest scores to organizations where the funds would go directly into enhancing their program.”

Many applicants were seeking assistance to pay for materials that would be used by students in class. “These programs are not insulated from cost escalations and, unfortunately, their funding has been reduced,” Dalsimer said.

Prefab poses new ways to assemble buildings

When the project team began planning construction of the Great Wolf Lodge in Perryville, they knew the project would include some extraordinary aspects and challenges. The developer of the 700-room hotel, resort, waterpark and entertainment center was determined to create an exceptional product and willing to engage in some leading-edge construction processes to achieve that goal.

The construction timeline for the six-story, 116,500-square-foot lodge, however, was tight.

“Great Wolf Lodge is a great client,” said Kurt Gavalier, Director of Offsite Construction at Turner Construction Company. “They have been pushing some boundaries of prefabrication over the years. We have done many of their jobs and included things like prefabricated bathroom pods.”

On the Perryville project, however, achieving a weather-tight structure by a set date was a priority. To make that deadline, Great Wolf and the construction team engaged in “prefabrication with a purpose,” Gavalier said.

“They partnered with a firm out of Philadelphia that specializes in modularized exterior walls and cold-formed metal framing solutions, and they prefabricated their entire roof structure,” he said. “It was like watching a wood-frame house go up with the panels and the roof trusses, but this was cold-formed metal framing for a commercial building. Great Wolf was adamant that this was needed to reduce the critical path and they were able to suck two months out of the schedule by prefabricating the roof truss structure and the exterior walls.”

Prefabrication isn’t a new operation in construction, but it is evolving.

Aided by BIM, companies are devising new ways to utilize off-site solutions to address labor shortages, meet critical path goals, and heighten both the quality and efficiency of installations. Some companies have developed highly specialized prefab offerings. Others are partnering and even merging to produce new, multi-disciplinary, prefabricated products.

Enthusiasts say that increased use and evolution of prefabrication is gradually changing the way we assemble buildings.

“One of the most impressive things I have seen up to this point is vertical, multi-trade racks,” said Langdon Lynch, Northeast Prefabrication Lead at DPR Construction. On one DPR project, “there were 10 vertical racks, 60 feet tall in four main shafts. The racks included all the conduit, all the HVAC, even the shaft walls and we lifted each rack over the building to install it. The superintendents were really thankful because that process saved time, improved safety and overall made the job easier.”

Rosendin Electric Co., which has created two prefabrication shops at warehouses near BWI and Dulles airports, has gained substantial experience in prefabricating and installing multi-trade racks, and collaborating with other trades on prefabricating products.

“Most of the coordination we have done has been with the mechanical trade, trying to share assemblies for pipe and conduit,” said Tony Esteve, Business Development Manager. “In some instances, we have gone to mechanical shops and worked there if they have big louver assemblies. We will do the wiring in their shop before an assembly gets put up on a wall.”

On a recent project, Rosendin discovered a different opportunity to collaborate with another trade and improve construction efficiency.

“We were doing duct banks,” Esteve said. “We typically have conduit in large assemblies, often 40 or 50 feet, for the underground duct banks coming off of the utility transformer into the building switchgear. We will have trenches dug and just drop the assembly in so they can be connected and you’re not putting pipe in the ground, section by section. One of the concrete trades asked if we could add a latch or clip on our strut assembly so they could put concrete boards or guards on it. That way, they wouldn’t have to build an assembly around our assembly. We said, absolutely!”

Multi-disciplinary prefab efforts are expanding to include additional trades, such as collaborations among MEP and structural steel contractors, Gavalier said.

“But some multi-disciplinary doesn’t necessarily mean dealing with multiple entities anymore,” he added. “There are some one-stop shops that do multi-disciplinary prefabrication. We’re seeing some of this happen because of M&A [merger and acquisition] in the industry. Mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, and fire alarm companies, in order to grow their revenues, are gobbling up their peers. One benefit is they are able to perform more services, more prefabrication inhouse and reduce the external complexity of coordination.”

Whether they’re collaborating with other trades or working on their own, many companies are gradually developing better, more efficient, more innovative prefab/offsite solutions.

Rosendin has refined its process of prefabricating medical headwalls — the array of connections mounted behind the head of a hospital bed to support electrical receptacles, nurse call and other communication systems and other functions.

“We prefabricate the headwalls to have all the conduits, whips and connections ready in a structure assembly so we can just set them and connect them as the building comes together,” said Brandon Jachimski, Operations Manager for Rosendin in Maryland.

To make the transportation and installation of often-large prefabricated items easier and more efficient, Rosendin also adopted a practice of sending everything out of its prefab shop on wheels and then improved the practice.

“We had a data center project where we had multi-story cable trays in 20- and 30-foot sections that we planned to roll in on carts.” Esteve said. “Someone suggested why don’t we get rid of the carts and put swivel wheels on the struts and we could just remove them after the racks were installed.”

That change led to just one hiccup.

“There was one punch list item that came back. The owner was confused about why a wheel was hanging off a strut assembly,” Esteve said.

At DPR, Sure Pod prefabricated bathrooms have become a signature, high-efficiency, high-quality item on some projects. At 20 Mass — a Washington, D.C. hotel designed around the concepts of green construction, healthy lifestyles and high tech — DPR installed 400 bathroom pods.

“It is an exceptionally nice product,” said Bill Hahner, Preconstruction Executive. “If you weren’t told, you would have no idea they were prefabricated units. And that’s one of our goals. The final product should meet the architect’s vision.”

Occasionally, prefabrication on a project becomes “fully volumetric,” Lynch said. “One of our latest projects [a pharmaceutical facility in New Jersey] was fully volumetric which is the holy grail for me. Think Lego bricks but the inside of them are completely finished — interior walls, all MEP is in place. You are just taking these blocks, setting them in place and making the final connections between them. Those projects aren’t common. They are the highest aspiration and they allow us to show the possibilities of what you can do with prefab.”

Advances in prefabrication/off-site solutions are also beginning to enable companies to apply the processes to items that aren’t identical.

“We are heading down a path of knowledge and wisdom and digital transformation where the item doesn’t have to be repeatable, it just has to be configurable,” Gavalier said. “Think about a multi-discipline rack that has ductwork and piping and conduit and steel going up in a hallway ceiling. It is something we have seen in healthcare for years. Every one of those racks going down the hallway is going to be slightly different. They are not repeatable, but they are configurable.”

Prefabrication shops, he said, are learning “how to modularize and configure systems, understand the nuances of the fabrication lines, and integrate those fabricated elements to create those slightly different products.”

Companies urged to pay more attention to immigration law

Faced with the prospect of changes in federal immigration policy and enforcement, some immigration experts are advising employers — including construction firms — to strengthen their record-keeping processes and develop plans to deal with workplace raids.

During the 2024 election, Donald Trump promised to crack down on undocumented immigrants in America and execute a mass-deportation policy. Following the election, Trump’s nominee for “border czar,” Tom Homan, announced that he plans to resume workplace raids in order to remove undocumented workers.

During the first Trump administration, such raids focused primarily on food-processing and manufacturing facilities. However, immigration experts warn that construction companies could be the target of future raids.

The construction industry is one of the largest employers of foreign-born workers. The Pew Research Center estimates that 26 percent of construction-industry workers are immigrants and half of that population is not authorized to work in the United States. The American Immigration Council estimates that undocumented workers make up 39 percent of plasters and stucco masons, 36 percent of drywall and ceiling installers, 36 percent of roofers, and 31 percent of painters.

Given the Trump Administration’s promise to heighten scrutiny, raids and deportation, “you don’t want to be on the radar of the federal government,” said Sheela Murthy, Founder and President of Murthy Law, an immigration law firm headquartered in Owings Mills.

Murthy said employers need to avoid hiring undocumented workers and be vigilant about documenting the status of their entire workforce.

Some immigration law firms are warning clients that the new federal administration will expand its I-9 audits — the review of documents that attest to the status of all employees.

Consequently, employers should conduct their own internal, I-9 audit now both to verify workers’ status and to demonstrate due diligence in identifying and dealing with any employees who do not have work authorizations or have insufficient documentation to prove their status.

Construction companies, especially general contractors, may also need to address the topic of immigration with their subcontractors. Although GCs are not legally required to verify the status of subcontractors’ workers, GCs may want to alter contract language to require heightened compliance with immigration law. The presence of undocumented workers on a construction site could draw federal attention and prompt I-9 audits or worksite raids.

“GCs should have strong provisions in their subcontractor agreements, requiring the subcontractor to comply with federal and state immigration regulations and E-verify, requiring the subcontractor to have an experienced immigration attorney conduct an annual immigration compliance certification, and obtaining indemnity from the subcontractor for any immigration violations,” Shanon Stevenson, partner in the Atlanta-based law firm Fisher & Phillips, said in a recent Construction Dive article. “Any agreements that do not currently contain such clauses to protect GCs should be amended.”

Construction companies also need to develop a plan for dealing with worksite visits or raids by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Homeland Security Investigations and train their staff on how to execute that plan.

While agents will give employers up to three days advance notice of a workplace visit to conduct an I-9 audit, they provide no advance notice of a worksite raid that is designed to apprehend undocumented workers.

The National Immigration Law Center advises workers at the site of a raid to insist that agents show them a warrant signed by a judge that correctly lists the company’s name and address, and email a copy of that warrant to their employer’s attorney.

Workers present during a raid are not permitted to help an individual flee the scene. And workers are urged to remain calm and in place. However, workers also don’t have to help federal agents by identifying a targeted worker or verifying whether that person is present or not.

“You need to put a protocol in place for dealing with visits from immigration officials and then mentor and train your people so there are no surprises and nobody freaks out,” Murthy said. “Sometimes people start sharing a lot more information than is required under federal law. My philosophy is don’t ever give the government way more information than is required because they can use that extra information against you.”

Immigration experts caution that other immigration issues may arise in the coming months.

During the election campaign, Trump proposed ending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for some immigrants who are currently, legally working in the U.S. The Republican Party is currently debating the future of the H1B visa program, which permits engineers, IT workers and other highly skilled individuals to work in the U.S. Some members of the Trump Administration have also discussed closing the U.S.-Mexico border or implementing travel bans, which could prevent current employees of U.S. companies from re-entering the country.

Project Profile: Morgan State University

Successful completion of the window restoration project at Morgan State University’s Memorial Chapel required both exceptional craftsmanship and extraordinary attention to the sensitivities of working in a historic building and active house of worship.

Constructed nearly 100 years ago and added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 2010, the stone chapel had experienced some deterioration. Its stately windows had been covered in multiple layers of paint which were peeling, cracking and chipping on interior and exterior surfaces. Glazing of the window glass was failing, wood components were displaying water damage and some elements of the window assemblies were missing, rotted or decayed beyond repair.

North Point Builders and Worcester Eisenbrandt mapped out a meticulous plan to restore the windows to their original splendor.

To enable the chapel to maintain normal operations throughout the four-month renovation, the project team divided the work into phases. Crews installed temporary barriers to protect the chapel from construction dust as workers removed, repaired and replaced the deep-set windows, restored damaged doors, cleaned and repointed exterior stone walls, and restored the portico soffit, fascia trim and columns.

“When they took the windows out to restore them in their shop, Worcester Eisenbrandt temporarily replaced the windows with plywood infills that had clear, plexiglass panels so that the chapel would still receive natural daylight,” said Greg Marks, Project Manager at North Point Builders. “Worcester Eisenbrandt was awesome. They cleaned up everything every day so that the chapel remained functional.”

Back in their workshop, the Worcester Eisenbrandt team focused on executing an accurate restoration.

“Sensitivity to the historic and religious significance of the chapel was paramount throughout the restoration process,” said Barbara Herrera, Assistant Project Manager at Worcester Eisenbrandt. “We all needed to ensure that every aspect of the restoration respected the building’s heritage, from materials selection to design considerations.”

One unusual and complex element of the window assembly presented the craftsmen with an unexpected challenge.

“The existing double-hung wood window sashes featured a tilt-function mechanism that allows the top and bottom sashes to be tilted/rotated in place to allow for easier cleaning and maintenance,” Herrera said.

That feature — which included hardwood rails within the window jamb, metal pivots and spring-loaded wheels — “was not able to be observed prior to window removal as the three components had been painted together over the numerous coats of paint applied throughout the years,” she said.

Craftsmen restored the mechanism, which hadn’t worked in many windows for decades, and altered the tilt function to prevent future damage to storm windows.

Revised Project JumpStart aims to include more students and employers

Following a year of strategic planning and growth, Project JumpStart Inc. began 2025 ready to greatly expand student enrollment and employer participation.

In 2024, the BC&E Foundation awarded a $2,348 grant to Project JumpStart to support its 15-week, pre-apprenticeship program in carpentry, plumbing and electrical.

Launched in 2006, Project JumpStart set the stage for a modernization effort when it achieved independent 501c(3) status in 2022.

“That status freed us up to put our foot on the gas peddle and make some necessary improvements in the program,” said Jimmy Stewart, Executive Director.

Since then, Project JumpStart has established processes to regularly update its curriculum and involve more employers in the program. It has expanded its staff and secured a second location which will enable the organization to double its class offerings in 2025.

“With two locations, our goal is to hold six classes a year – three on the east side of Baltimore City, and three on the west side,” Stewart said. “We aim to max out each class, which would be 22 people per class and 132 students in 2025.”

Project JumpStart trainers have extensive experience in the construction industry and 80 percent of them have worked as instructors for five years or longer.

“The Project JumpStart program is employer-centered curriculum which is created by the industry,” Stewart said. “We are now doubling down on that focus and having our curriculum audited every year by industry individuals to make sure that what we are teaching is on par with what the industry needs.”

Project JumpStart has also strengthened its wrap-around services for students. It now leverages both inhouse expertise and community partners to provide employment readiness training, financial literacy education, job search services, and assistance in overcoming obstacles to employment. Those include challenges with transportation, housing, child support and legal issues.

“Another thing we have changed is our front-end assessments,” Stewart said. “We are not assuming that anybody can do construction. Not everyone wants to work out in the elements. Not everyone wants to get up at 4 am or 5 am and work long hours. We improved our front-end assessment to make sure this is a career path that really makes sense for the individual.”

Stewart hopes all those improvements will build on Project JumpStart’s historic success rates. In the past, about 70 percent of graduates have landed construction jobs and many have gone on to develop long, successful careers in the industry.

“We see individuals make major gains in six to 12 months,” he said. “They have income coming in, they can support their family, and they are enjoying life.”

Stewart, who is preparing to form a Project JumpStart Alumni Association, said some successful graduates already make a point of staying in touch with the program and helping students overcome challenges and land good jobs.

BC&E Leadership for 2025

BC&E welcomes two new board members: Emily Sales, Design Collective, Inc., and Ricky Venters, Hartman Executive Advisors. They both will serve a three-year term for the organization.

In addition to Sales and Venters joining the board, BC&E members voted for Dennis Walsh, Floors Etc, to return for another three-year term.

BC&E members also unanimously voted to have the Executive Committee return for another year: President Ted Bowes, Excell Concrete Construction, LLC; Vice President Jeff Hossfeld, The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company; Treasurer Thomas Koch, Plano-Coudon Construction; Secretary Marianne Crampton, MK Consulting Engineers, LLC; and Member-at-Large John Gregg, GWWO Architects.

BC&E thanks retiring board members Jonathan Goetz, Oak Contracting, LLC; Fred Marino, Design Collective, Inc.; and Doug McGinnis, Bunting Door & Hardware Co., Inc., for their commitment to the success of BC&E.