Renovations complete on Bunns Lane apartments
Work served as hands-on experience for students
BY KATHY CHANG Staff Writer
Shakira Foxx couldn't help herself but dart from room to room in her newly renovated two-bedroom apartment on Bunns Lane last week.

KATHY CHANG The sparkling kitchen of one of the apartments renovated in Building No. 11 of the Bunns Lane apartment complex. A total of eight apartments - six with two bedrooms and two with three bedrooms - were renovated. The Woodbridge Housing Authority held a ribboncutting ceremony outside the building Feb. 14.

"It's just breathtaking," said Foxx, who said she would be moving into her new apartment with her son. "It's beautiful. … I love it."

Foxx, who said she lived in the Bunns Lane apartment complex all of her life, joined more than a dozen residents of the complex, Mayor John E. McCormac, Councilman Gregg Ficarra, Woodbridge Housing Authority Executive Director Donna Brightman, the Board of Commissioners of the Housing Authority, residents of the Woodbridge Housing Authority, and representatives from various building trades involved in the construction project for a ribbon cutting ceremony outside the newly renovated building on Feb. 14.

"Since everything is beige inside the buildings, it was a joke that we would celebrate on a red day [Valentine's Day]," said Brightman. "The apartments have all kinds of brand-new amenities, a new heating system, etc."

A door to one of the newly renovated apartments was fittingly decorated the Valentine's Day color of red.

The vision of renovating Building No. 11, which has eight apartments - six with two bedrooms and two with three bedrooms, began two years ago when the building was found to have an extreme case of bedbugs, which are small nocturnal insects that feed on the blood of humans and other warmblooded hosts.

The Bunns Lane apartment complex, which was built in the 1950s, consists of 150 affordable-housing units with approximately 350 residents. The Garden Apartment Management Co. in the township manages the complex.

"We were not told until many months later [that we had bedbugs]," said Brightman.

With an agreement with the New Jersey Regional Council of Carpenters Local 119 and with the help of the council's New York District, they provided students with handson experience with the carpenter trade with the renovation of Building No. 11.

"We looked at the situation and decided, why not gut the building," said Steve Levisay, lead carpenter of the project. "It made sense to fix the problem."

However, Levisay said funds were slow coming in, and that's when he decided to form the training classes, which he said was the first type of its kind.

"We had between 175 to 200 students from the Newark and New York City area that participated in the renovation," he said. "We had a lot of conversations to open the door for the students. They did more than 50 percent of the work. It was an interesting experience."

Dennis Brown, instructor at New York City Building Works, said the students were trained on a wide range of the carpenter trade from shoring, hanging plasterboard and demolition to brickwork, remediation work, and building wheelchair ramps for each of the buildings.

"This was great training and a great opportunity for the students…some have gone on to high-paying jobs," said Brown. "The nice part is we were a team that worked together. We would come and Steve [Levisay] would direct us to what needed to be done."

Sean Cashin, who has worked with the maintenance crew at the apartment complex for nine years, said in the future he hopes all the residents would be able to take advantage of Brightman's vision.

Brightman briefly mentioned that she hopes to revitalize all the buildings in the complex.

ChauntaeWilliams, 29, said the newly renovated apartments were beautiful.

"I haven't made my mind up of which apartment I am getting," said Williams, who has lived in the apartment complex for four years. "I was living in a one-bedroom apartment and then I had a baby last year, so I moved to a two-bedroom apartment. This place is very peaceful and a nice place to live in."