Mark Moosic knows what it's like to succeed against the odds.

Twenty-eight years ago, Moosic was a dishwasher at the Marriott Hotel in Harrisburg.

These days, he can look out the window of his office in the Griest Building to monitor construction of the Marriott Lancaster at Penn Square and the Lancaster County Convention Center. He's the general manager for both facilities.

Moosic will talk about some of the things that complex will bring to the community in terms of jobs and opportunities for other businesses as the keynote speaker Monday, Oct. 13, at BASE Inc.'s Annual Business of Excellence Awards Breakfast.

The breakfast, beginning at 7 a.m. in the multipurpose activities center at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, 750 E. King St., will honor four local business owners who have succeeded "against overwhelming odds."

Moosic is no stranger to BASE, a nonprofit agency at 447 S. Prince St. that provides assistance to prospective business owners and first-time home buyers.

BASE is part of the Workforce Readiness Committee that has been working with Moosic and the Lancaster County Convention Center Authority to prepare people for jobs at the complex.

"There are so many organizations dedicated to helping people [find jobs here that] we didn't have to reinvent the wheel," Moosic said. "We just had to make the connections."

The complex will need the equivalent of 130 to 150 full-time workers when it opens next spring.

"When we have those people, we'll be able to provide a quality product, and when we have that, we can drive sales," he said.

Moosic said he's guaranteeing an interview to everyone who completes the training for prospective employees being offered through CareerLink's Ready2Work program.

Some of the workers he ends up hiring may one day work their way up to general manager — or start their own businesses.

That kind of upward mobility is not uncommon in the hospitality industry, Moosic said, recalling how he moved from dishwasher to room service a couple of months after starting his first job, and from there to server captain and then assistant restaurant manager.

"I'm not an anomaly," he said. "It happens all the time."

Moosic has come nearly full circle from Londonderry Township outside Middletown, where he grew up, through postings in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington and Houston, and now to Lancaster.

His employer during that time has been Interstate Hotels and Resorts, a management company that operates hotels for "all the major brands," such as Hilton and Marriott.

"The brands are very strict," Moosic said. "Sometimes, I think we're held to a higher standard than [employees of] the brand itself."

Interstate is managing both the convention center, which is a public entity, and the adjoining Marriott hotel.

The hotel is owned by Penn Square Partners, a limited partnership, which consists of general partners Penn Square General Corp., a High Industries affiliate, and Penn Square Ltd. LLC, an affiliate of Lancaster Newspapers Inc., publisher of the Sunday News, Lancaster New Era and Intelligencer Journal.

During the past eight or nine years, Moosic has been a turnaround specialist for Interstate, working at struggling hotels, conversions and startups, including "nine ground-ups," he said.

Moosic believes the job in Lancaster, which is something of a homecoming for him and his wife, Kara, who is from York, will be different from the previous ground-ups.

"They were looking for a leadership group to stay," he explained. "I plan on staying unless they kick me out."

Back on BASE
Although BASE has been making informal referrals of prospective hotel workers to the Ready2Work program, such assistance is outside its normal scope of operations.

By its own definition, BASE, which stands for Building and Supporting Entrepreneurship, is "dedicated to helping low-income individuals, minorities and women realize their dreams of entrepreneurship and home ownership."

"We are one of the agencies approved [by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency] to deal with home ownership counseling," said Cobbie Burns, one of the agency's founding board members.

"We're dealing with so many foreclosures," he said. "Sometimes, we have two or three calls a week from people in the foreclosure process."

BASE also provides one-on-one counseling and other assistance for people buying a home for the first time or thinking about starting a business.

The agency's annual awards give recognition to some of the people in the business community who can serve as role models for those new entrepreneurs.

This year, BASE will honor:

• Cecilya S. Glover, of CCL Associates Inc., with its Emerging Business Award.

• Castor G. Melendez, of Melendez General Contracting LLC, with its Business Expansion Award.

• Bartola Santiago, of Bart's Electrical Services, with its Business Leadership Award.

• Carlos E. Graupera, of the Spanish American Civic Association, with its Alice Sanders Community Service Award.

Cost to attend the breakfast is $45 per person or $300 for a table of eight. For reservations or information on sponsorships, call Dolores Brown, 392-5467.

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Dennis Larison is editor of the business section and can be reached by telephone at 291-8753 or by e-mail at dlarison@lnpnews.com.