PORT HURON TWP. - Patience, perseverance and political action by the building trades helped foster the pending construction of one of the largest construction projects ever in St. Clair County, the new $32 million Detention and Intervention Center.

A ceremonial groundbreaking took place on May 22, which included law enforcement, politicians and building trades representatives, who worked with local officials to ensure the usage of a project labor agreement requiring contractors to pay union scale and fringes.

"The construction process is just starting, but this project has been going on for five years," said Lee Masters, chairman of the St. Clair County Board of Commissioners. "There have been untold hours of planning to make this facility a model of efficiency and effectiveness."

Much of the planning was done by an active group of building trades representatives who live in St. Clair County. Not wanting such a significant project built in the community by an ABC contractor, the union reps attended planning commit tee meetings, met with commissioners and spoke out at public hearings in favor of the project - and in favor of a project labor agreement.

The Associated Builders and Contractors also put the pressure on lawmakers and the community with newspaper ads and brochures, but the building trades had done their homework and countered the ABC's offensive.

Mike Moran of IBEW Local 58, Craig Kirchner of the Detroit Building Trades and Steve Ellery of Painters Local 1474 sat on the county's Construction Committee, and Ben Cloutens of Local 58 sat on the county's Criminal Justice Advisory Board. "We deluged the community with the merits of a PLA," Cloutens said.

In June 2001, the St. Clair County Board of Commissioners voted 7-0 to approve the project labor agreement with building trade unions. Despite a number of those commissioners being replaced by Republicans in last November's election, the new commissioners never canceled the project labor agreement and voted to use one on an added portion of the facility.

"We've been championing the benefits of a PLA since day one," said painter Ellery, one of those commissioners voted out of office last November. "We had the help of a lot of tradespeople showing up at public hearings. There were 11 meetings over the years, and a lot of times, union members were the only ones at some of these meetings, so their input meant a lot."

The 200,180 square-foot complex will include a 448-bed jail, a 70-bed juvenile facility and sheriff's department offices. The complex will replace the operations of two small and outmoded facilities - Sheriff Dan Lane told attendees at the groundbreaking that the county has been forced to send 70 inmates to jail facilities around the state.

After discussing the exhausting planning process, Lane said what emerged was a desire by the county to assess mentally ill people before they become inmates. This lead to the planned intervention center, which will include a mental and physical health assessment center staffed by mental health professionals.

Construction of the detention and intervention center is a significant step for unions in the community, Moran said, but not the only one. He said six years ago, 1.2 percent of all electrical permits in Huron, Sanilac and St. Clair counties that were pulled by contractors were by nonunion contractors. Today, that number is 20 percent, and on competitively bid jobs, it's closer to 50 percent.

"We have a lot of members here, and they're very active in getting our contractors to bid work competitively," Moran said.

ST. CLAIR COUNTY sheriffs representatives, political leaders and building trades agents on the site of the new Detention and Intervention Center during the groundbreaking.

A RENDERING of the new jail facility.