Lakewood abandons municipal muster zone
BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer

LAKEWOOD - Despite an effort on the part of municipal officials to provide a safe space for day laborers to congregate to seek work, the muster zone is now a thing of the past.

According to Mayor Raymond Coles, talks are in the works in an effort to try and find another solution regarding the issue of providing a place for day laborers to gather out of the public eye in order to eliminate the need for them to congregate along the downtown corridor.

Coles said he was disappointed that the effort to provide a muster zone in the Lakewood Industrial Park did not work. A waiting area with portable rest rooms was provided, but the community's population of day laborers did not use the facility during the few months it was open.

"I think it could have worked out if everyone worked a little harder, including us," Coles said.

The mayor said he is now in the process of talking with representatives from a nonprofit agency as well as officials from a local church to try to create a workable solution that will please long-time residents and the day laborer population as well.

The cost to construct the muster zone, which was approved by the Township Committee in April, was about $40,000. The 2-acre "employment services area," as the zone was referred to in municipal documents, was in the Lakewood Indus-trial Park on Swarthmore Avenue. The area provided an awning-covered shelter, rest rooms and a place where food service trucks were able to park.

Funding for the project came from an Urban Enterprise Zone loan.

The idea of the muster zone was to create an area where people who are day laborers could gather at a single location outside of the downtown area to seek work with employers on a daily basis, according to township officials.

The presence of day laborers in the downtown area has been a source of concern for business owners and municipal officials over the past few years.

Business owners indicated that the presence of large groups of men on the street in front of their businesses was intimidating to some customers.

Public officials expressed concern about the day laborers running into the streets to negotiate with potential employers as those employers were driving through town looking for employees.

Coles said people wishing to travel to the employment area, which was three miles from downtown, had several choices, including the Job Link buses that run between downtown and the industrial park. The day laborers could also have walked or ridden a bike to the new employment area, he said.

Frank Argote-Freyre, a local repre-sentative of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey, summed up the Lakewood muster zone project as "a good concept created with good intentions, but placed in a bad location." He said there had been talks among officials about putting the muster zone in a location closer to the downtown area, which would have been preferable.

Argote-Freyre said anti-immigrant groups will call the muster zone a failure. He said he does not see it that way. He said he sees it as a project planned in the wrong location too far from town.

"It was difficult for both the work force and contractors to meet at the muster zone because the location was too remote and many contractors were unwilling to go there," he said.