There’s good news from the Connie Hillman Family Foundation Urban Construction Knowledge (CHUCK) Center, Habitat Tucson’s innovative workforce development center and 15,000-square-foot construction warehouse!
Want to get involved? Visit the CHUCK’s page to learn more or get in touch with us by calling (520) 326-1217 or emailing info@habitattucson.org!
Workforce Development
- The CHUCK Center is now a registered and National Center for Construction Education & Research accredited testing site. This allows us to provide assessments for skilled construction workers to improve their skills and earn certifications.
- We have had a great turnout of students and volunteers throughout the year while in full production of modular wall panels: 381 volunteers since inception and 4,600 hours contributed!
- Several groups from the U of A have joined to volunteer at the CHUCK.
- We’ve also had 2 independent PCC students volunteering regularly outside of their classes.
- We also have a high school student who has now started to volunteer on a weekly basis to build his skills!
U of A students in the Kappa Alpha Order who came to volunteer at the CHUCK.AmeriCorps Housing
- The AmeriCorps apartments are progressing well. We are now finishing up electrical for the duplex in order to move into insulation and drywall!
Student doing electrical work.Pima Community College Partnership
- We had a group of PCC students join us in the Fall semester who did great work. This semester ended on Dec 18th. All framing was completed on the apartments.
- A new group of 14 students from PCC began their work on Feb 14th at the CHUCK.
- 3 of these students are from the electrical program & 11 from the carpentry program.
- We have welcomed our first PCC Intern
- His name is Cesar! He is currently attending classes for the business program and wants to learn more about construction.
- We are hopeful to explore having the students on the traditional construction site to provide on-the-job training for these students.
Modular Wall Development & Warehouse
- Panel production has been very effective and efficient. We finished the panel production of our newest subdivision Valor Vista within a month and raised the walls of the 7 homes within that subdivision. 210 panels were produced for Valor Vista.
- We are now storing completion material for Valor Vista 7 houses and CDP 3 as well.
- We are now ready to start panel production for our homes that we will build in FY25.
- Continuing to procure and store our materials.
RV Care-A-Vanners
- We have had our first RV CHUCK residents, also known as Care-A-Vanners! They worked some days at the construction site and also helped at the CHUCK.
- Graham in January stayed for a couple of weeks!
- Denno & Jana arrived in February and stayed for a few weeks!
Care-a-vanner Graham.Educational Space
- We continue to provide the classroom for groups to meet and potentially attract more volunteer involvement.
- Recently we were able to host ICS (Interfaith Community Services) as well as other groups.