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Virtually no women or minority contractors have won work at the mammoth project to build AOL Time Warner's new home, though more than 50% of the $750 million construction job has been awarded.
The structural steel is rising six stories above Columbus Circle from the site where the Coliseum used to stand. But the participation of women and minority contractors and suppliers in the nation's largest privately financed development is a miniscule 2%.
Advocates for minority- and women-owned firms complain that the team of developers, led by Stephen Ross's Related Cos., has made no effort to involve them in the AOL Time Warner Center project.
The situation is potentially embarrassing to AOL Time Warner, the media giant whose business lines include a Time Warner cable franchise that covers much of New York City, and popular Internet access service AOL. Co-Chief Operating Officer Richard Parsons is one of America's most powerful black executives.
AOL Time Warner is partowner of the mixed-use office, retall, hotel and residential project and will be its largest occupant.
"I would suggest AOL is consumer-driven, and they should consider the message they are sending out," says Lenore Janis, president of Professional Women in Construction.
The construction manager for the $1.7 billion complex, Bovis Lend Lease, says the project has a goal of 20% participation for women and minority contractors, and it...