By: William Antonelli

In the 40 years since the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center opened on Manhattan’s far West Side, the area around it has transformed. Hudson Yards has risen next door, the 7 train now stops nearby—and Javits itself has changed dramatically, expanding its footprint and capacity as its events have grown bigger and more ambitious. That growth wouldn’t be possible without hundreds of skilled union carpenters and contractors working year-round to keep the sprawling complex—a major economic powerhouse for NYC—running.

At the center of that work are the union carpenters, whom District Council of Carpenters Representative Michael Vastarelli calls a “leading force” keeping the space running. For every event that comes through the Javits Center, from enormous trade shows to smaller corporate keynotes, it’s the carpentry team’s job to construct and later take down the temporary structures that fill the exhibition halls, from walls to signs to complex custom environments.

In that sense, Javits is a construction site in perpetual motion, with contractors and skilled union crews working together to transform the space from one event to the next. The work never ends—if anything, it’s only grown in scale as the Javits campus has expanded.

For the center’s longest-serving carpenters, that transformation is impossible to miss. Xavier Villalobos, a carpenter and assistant shop steward, said that when he first started at Javits 39 years ago, “there was absolutely nothing around. When you’d go outside to go home … you couldn't even catch a cab because there was nothing on this end of the city, so the cabs wouldn't come by here.”

Fellow steward John Walz, president of Resilient Floor Coverers Local 2287, agreed, adding that the development of Hudson Yards and Javits’ various expansions have made companies eager to put on shows there. “Javits is its own ecosystem, but it also generates a ton of revenue for the businesses in and around the area. It generates millions upon millions of dollars.”

The scale of these builds—and the contractor and union workforce required to pull them off—can be enormous: The sports festival Fanatics Fest, which brought 200,000 attendees to Javits this past July, required roughly 400 carpenters working over the course of the week before the event. Massive trade shows, like the National Retail Federation’s annual convention, involve as many as 900 carpenters constructing storefronts and vendor booths.

Many events require highly specialized one-off construction projects: Fanatics Fest, for instance, hosted both on-site basketball courts and a replica of Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club sports bar. “Everything’s built pretty much from scratch,” Walz said. “You walk in and you don’t even realize you’re at the Javits.”

Pulling this off takes a large workforce—and careful preparation. Major exhibition contractors at Javits include Freeman, GES, T3 Expo and CSI Worldwide, which work with exhibitors and skilled union crews to bring these temporary environments to life. Contractors can spend months planning installations before working with union carpenters to turn those plans into reality.

“It’s amazing what the carpenters do here at the Javits Center, how everything comes together from one day to another,” said CSI City Manager Vincent Torres. “Sometimes you don’t even know how they do it, but they do it.”

The carpentry crews sometimes work right up to the last minute, putting in the time to fix any small imperfections, from a missed patch of paint to a tiny tear in the carpet.

Alongside their construction work, Javits carpenters also receive customer service training. That training becomes important when carpenters are working directly with exhibitors who may have a great deal riding on the event.

“It could be a mom-and-pop shop that’s put everything on the line to come here and exhibit,” Walz explained. “You’ve gotta make sure you show empathy and work with them.”

The job also requires carpenters to adapt quickly when plans—or circumstances—change. Over the years, Javits crews have dealt with electrical fires, burst pipes and citywide blackouts. Whatever happens, the show must go on: “In my 25 years,” said foreman Manfred Adjin-Tettey of Carpenters Local 45, “there's never been a day where a show hasn’t opened. Even when we had a fire in the building the night before a show, it did open and it opened on time.”

Perhaps the most extraordinary test of those skills came in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic brought Javits’ calendar of conventions and exhibitions to a halt. Within days, the building had a radically different mission. As New York State and federal agencies moved to transform Javits into an emergency field hospital, the center’s carpentry crew—working alongside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other workers—sprang into action.

“We had a small skeleton crew assemble all the hospital rooms,” Walz said. “And then throughout COVID, there were house carpenters that kept up with the building.”

During the pandemic, “the Javits Center was the first convention center in the country that decided to use the facility as a hospital,” Adjin-Tettey said. “We were the first carpenter union to build that.”

Looking back, Walz describes walking the convention center’s dark and abandoned halls as “creepy,” but that anxiety was dwarfed by “a sense of pride knowing that you were able to help people.”

As Javits marks its 40th anniversary this year, a spokesperson for Governor Kathy Hochul described the center to Under Construction News as “a cornerstone of Manhattan’s West Side development and a vital economic engine for New York … a place that brings the world together and creates an opportunity for thousands of New Yorkers, always pushing New York forward.”

For contractors and union crews alike, keeping that engine running can require long, unpredictable hours, particularly as an opening deadline approaches.

“The membership stays to get the job done,” said Vastarelli. “There are shows that come down to the wire: It opens at 9 a.m. and we’re still kicking out a carpet and fixing something. But as soon as that show opens, it’s like ‘poof,’ everybody’s gone and you see the crystals. Magic.”

For many of the carpenters, the demanding work has also provided something more lasting: a career with stability. Walz, who’s worked at Javits for 22 years, said that being part of the union has “given me opportunities to provide for my family that I never thought possible.”

“I’ve made a lot of good friends,” Villalobos said, gesturing to the other carpenters in our group. “Camaraderie is huge here.”

The carpenters pointed to the stability that comes with union wages and benefits—the ability to support a family, plan for the future and build a lasting career in the trade. For those who have spent decades building and rebuilding Javits, that may be the most enduring thing they’ve built.