Toms River Officials See Potentional Along the Route 37 Corridor

There are Lots of challenges but even greater potential ahead in creating an economic corridor along Route 37 through Toms River, Berkeley Township, Manchester and Lakehurst.Listen to the entire program:

On WOBM-AM's Townsquare Tonight, Toms River Mayor Tom Kelaher and Township Planner Jay Lynch look to the mitigated former Ciba Geigy property as an area of potential job growth along the Route 37 corridor. Lynch said with improvements to the infrastructure, that includes additional links to the Garden State Parkway, the site can house things like private support services for the Mega-Base.

"They have suppliers that need access to the base, sometimes by rail, sometimes just by proximity, and they can do subcontract work for the military," said Lynch.

Kelaher and Lynch explain that Toms River has always had a deficit of decent paying jobs. According to Lynch, attracting jobs to the corridor would not only benefit residents but the infrastructure and environment as well.

"We can recapture and have them not commute quite as far if we got a diverse economic base in the Route 37 corridor. It would be good for the Garden State Parkway. It would be good for the environment."

However, Kelaher believes that our lack of mass transportation and difficult coastal land use permitting process could pose major challenges to revitalizing the region.

The Route 37 Economic Corridor Study is being developed by regional planning group, Together North Jersey. See the preliminary study at TogetherNorthJersey.com.