The new Jewish
Vocational Service
building on
Southfield Road.
Jewish Vocational Service's
beautiful new home is
allowing for more efficient
and expanded services
H
Rose Gooley receives job placement counseling from Sandy Prosch-Jensen.
A
dollar,
multf-million
whirlwind project is giving
the Jewish Vocational
Service and Community
Workshop more elbow
room to serve its 3,500 clients. The
new JVS building on Southfield
Road, between 12 and 13 Mile, also
provides the agency with a much
higher degree of community recogni-
tion. This has quickly been trans-
lated into more inquiries for serv-
ices, according to JVS board
president Stuart Goldstein.
JVS more than doubled its space
when it moved last month from
29,000 square feet of rented space on
the second and sixth floors of Kris-
ten Towers on Greenfield Road.
Ground was broken for the new
65,000-square foot facility Oct. 20,
1985, and tha building was com-
pleted 11 months later.
The expanded facilities provide
JVS more room for the developmen-
tally and emotionally disabled,
senior adult workshop, employment
training and job-seeking counseling
and services, and college placement
aid. The move of JVS' administra-
tive offices to Southfield from its
Woodward Avenue facility, south of
the Detroit Medical Center, has
created room for expansion of serv-
ices there as well.
"It is going to be a tremendous
boon to the Jewish community," said
Goldstein. "We've already added a
service for high school students to
help them pick colleges and we are
receiving more calls daily because
our visibility factor is so much
higher."
Visibility is not the only plus of
the new. building. JVS had no room
to expand at Kristen Towers and "it
was cumbersome to run a workshop
in an office building," Goldstein said.
The agency also ran into problems
with its landlord several years ago
when the building owner wanted to
restrict disabled clients to a back
entrance and a separate elevator. In-
creasing rents were also a long-term
concern of the JVS board.
The main floor of the new
facility is devoted to day services for
developmentally disabled adults. The
second floor houses counseling,
placement, and administrative
offices, and a comprehensive voca-
tional resource library which is open
to the public. The JVS placement
service is free to both job seekers
and emp'oyers. .
Our services are not as well
known as they should be," said
Goldstein, "because people would
prefer not to use them if they didn't
have to. These are people out of
' work, women coming back into the
work force because they are widowed
or divorced — people needing sup-
port services."
JVS, which is second only to the
Michigan Employment Security
Commission in size, is now able to
handle its clients more efficiently
through its new facility. Er