Protests At Condo Development End With Deal

The developer of a condominium development on Lebanon Street across from Melrose-Wakefield Hospital has agreed to hire unionized steel workers in order to bring an end to three weeks of protests by local laborers, according to the developer's attorney.

On Tuesday morning on the sidewalk across from the Crystal Lake Residences development, at the entrance to the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital parking lot, approximately 20 men held or wore poster-board signs with messages such as "Local jobs for local taxpayers," "Friends of labor" and "We need jobs, not greed."

A few of the picketers occasionally shouted to the men working on the project, disparaging the workers' skills, and a few obscenities were shouted.

One protester who agreed to speak to Melrose Patch, giving his name as Eddie, said that the picket line has been gathering at the project site for about three weeks each morning during rush hour, "to let people that are commuting know that there's something that's going on in Melrose that they might want to contact their aldermen or the city officials about."

Wearing a sign that read, "Mommy and Daddy can't work here," Eddie said that the protest was not about union versus non-union employees, but the lack of local laborers working on a local project.

"We have more than enough competent people that live within the city of Melrose to perform the work for the money that these people are getting paid," he said. Eddie said that the project superintendent is a Melrose resident; the crane operator is a union member and the people operating the tractor trailers are union Teamsters.

"I can tell you I believe that the people that are going to be erecting the steel are not union and are not local residents," he said. "The closest I believe that they are from is from down near Framingham, Watertown. That's the information I can give you that I'm aware of."

On Wednesday afternoon, attorney Patrick McAvoy, representing developer Crystal Lake LLC, said that "the dispute over here has been settled by means of Crystal Lake hiring some union employees to work on the steel erection at the site. You may notice the picketers are gone as of this morning."

The 10-unit condominium complex originally received site plan approval from the city in 2006, McAvoy said, and construction began in April this year. The project is slated for completion in the spring of 2011.