by Mindy Aguon

Guam - The Ukudu Workforce Housing and Training Village was developed in preparation for the Guam buildup designed to support and house temporary H2-B workers who were expected to come to Guam and work on buildup-related projects.

But since the ribbon was cut more than a year ago, the relocation of U.S. Marines to Guam has not only been scaled back, but delayed.

As such, Younex Enterprises Corporation has had to adapt and look for a new type of customer. Operations general manager Eddy Reyes says with the slow down of the buildup and a Record of Decision not anticipated before 2015, the company had to find a way to utilize the workforce village rather then letting it sit idle. "There are customers out there. The hotels are over capacity at certain types of the year. So this provides an alternative to the community," he explained. "It provides an alternative for the military to house people when there's no space on base at AAFB or at Big Navy."

And for the last year, Younex has been making the necessary changes to meet military standards. Reyes continued, "So we have been cleared by Joint Region Marianas Housing Office, through a number of inspections that have been conducted here by military inspectors to allow us to be considered as an eligible facility for contingency or non-availability of housing on base."

Reyes says they will be a full-service facility that will also serve meals to the military personnel. He says B&G Pacific recently received the necessary certification to service military customers who are on temporary duty on Guam. In fact, this week the Ukudu Workforce Village will get their first 30 military personnel and over the course of the next few weeks, that number will increase to 250.

"We know there's a limited capacity out in the community," said Reyes. "We provide full service transportation to and from work so it eases up on rental cars for the primary market of the tourists and we're working with Kloppenburg Enterprises."

Kloppenburg will bus the personnel to and from their work sites. Having the military as a customer not only helps alleviate some of the burden on the local hotels that don't have adequate room availability as it stands now, Reyes says Younex is also providing jobs for the community for security, housekeeping, and food preparation. Younex is working with the Agency for Human Resource Development to begin a referral and training program.

"If we can get them in early as we start building up and providing services, we can train them to the housekeeping standards and so forth, and hopefully we'll hire them here directly or we give them experience they need in order to put in their resume that they have some level of certification in the house keeping area so that they can actually apply in the hotels, as well," he said.

With more than 200 acres of property in the Dededo area, the company is also exploring the possibility of how it can be of assistance during mass evacuations or national emergencies for Guam and the region. "We're an option that is available and we'd like to see where we can partner with the local and federal government as well as our private business partners to see what we can do to make this better for everybody here on Guam," Reyes concluded.

Of note is that although they share the same name, Younex Enterprises Corporation that runs Ukudu housing is a separate entity from the company that is building the stalled Emerald Park Oceanview Condominiums in Tamuning. The Ukudu Village is partnered with STX Construction and Orix Company, based out of Japan.