The reconfigured layout of the building, and the fusing of related services into distinct areas, will improve the customer experience and reduce wait times, county officials said.
“We took the time to do this right, so we went through an extensive planning process looking at where the bottlenecks were and also ways to streamline them,” said Dan Foley, president of the Montgomery County Board of County Commissioners.
RELATED: Demolition begins to support Job Center project
The 18-month renovation of the Job Center officially wrapped up with a grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony held Thursday.
The center is now home to about 525 employees and all of Job and Family Services’ divisions, except for Children Services, which remains at North Main Street.
Related and complementary services have been integrated into four well-defined service areas in the building, which have their own store-front entrances.
Previously, visitors typically filed into a single main entry point, often causing long lines, and then were directed to other areas within the building.
This was the first major overhaul of the Job Center since it opened in June of 1997.
Laws, demographics and much else have changed since then, and the reinvented center is an investment in people that updates and modernizes how services are delivered, said Bob Gruhl, Montgomery County Job and Family Services’ deputy director of operations.
More integrated workforce, employment and social services will help connect people with what they need to move toward self-sufficiency and be prepared for the available jobs and the ones that are coming, officials said.
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