Almost 5,000 people showed up to a Tampa Bay job fair, resumes in hand, to apply for construction jobs in Florida.

According to WTSP.com, the emotions of the job seekers ranged from hopeful to desperate.

“Desperate… I am. I really want a job. It’s hard. We’re behind on everything,” says Georgia Smith of Hudson, who says she and her fiancé can do tile work.

ZMG Construction is looking for all sorts of workers to help redevelop a 12 block area near downtown. The public/private project is called Encore. It will include commercial space, market-rate and low-income housing.

Tampa housing officials have been working on the project for years, ever since they tore down the dilapidated Central Park Village housing project. “The days of old-fashioned public housing are gone,” says Tampa Housing Authority President Jerome Ryans. “We need to move in a different direction.”

And at least some of the people who waited in the hot sun and shuffled through the dirt will help build Encore.

ZMG plans to hire 2,000 workers by the end of the year and nearly 5,000 through the course of the project. ZMG head Richard Zahn says he’s made a commitment to hire local. “I think it’s very important to look at your own backyard and protect the folks that are living in this city.”

Glenn Lawson, 52, was third in line at the Encore construction site, waiting in the pre-dawn darkness. The crowd grew rapidly until, by 10 a.m., some 2,000 people had showed up. They all had stories of job losses, seemingly endless job searches and piecing together ways to survive without paychecks in a city with 13 percent unemployment.

“I’m out there every day,” said Lawson, who lost his construction job two years ago. “I’m hoping to get a job. I don’t care what kind. Anything I can do to get a steady check coming in, I’ll do.”

He arrived early, he said, because this job site wasn’t going to be his last stop. By about 10 a.m. he had filed his application. “Now I can still go out and continue to look,” Lawson said.

Behind him the line of hopeful job applicants twisted and turned across a wide swath of bulldozed land that once was the site of the Central Park Village public housing complex. It wound toward three tents, where about 30 people gathered to apply for various construction-related jobs.
A few steps beyond the huddled applicants, people could get a free hot dog and a soda.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Construction, Jobs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.