Aleyda Vivar woke up at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning to do something she hasn’t been able to for about four months: Gather up storage boxes full of blue-and-white ceramics, gabán ponchos, and other artisanal goods from her home state of Puebla, Mexico to sell at Corona Plaza in Queens.
“We woke up, and we gave thanks to God that we are going to work,” 36-year-old Vivar said in Spanish under a blue canopy stall at the plaza, speaking to THE CITY through an interpreter.
Vivar and her partner, 40-year-old Guillermo Campos, had spent the last few months trying to sell elsewhere while borrowing money from family to cover rent, after they and other vendors had been abruptly evicted by city Department of Sanitation police this summer. On a freezing morning, the couple were among the handful who returned to Corona Plaza to do business.
They returned a day after Mayor Eric Adams announced a “first-ever regulated community vending area” to replace the unlicensed market that had drawn praise for its offerings but complaints from some business owners and locals.
“For the first, probably, week or so it’s going to be just merchandise,” said Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the Urban Justice Center’s Street Vendor Project, who told THE CITY that food vendors are still waiting on new permits to be processed before they can return.
The “vending area” will take up just a portion of the plaza, operated by the Queens Economic Development Corporation for four months until the city Department of Transportation seeks a long-term operator next year, according to the mayor’s office.
Dozens of vendors will take turns operating the 14 blue canopy stalls the city has allotted to the pedestrian triangle that sits under the rumbling 7 train track, said Kaufman-Gutierrez. That means each vendor can appear as often as three days a week for now, though that frequency will decrease to just about once a week as more vendors are approved to share the space. Operating hours will be 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every Wednesday through Sunday at what had been a freewheeling, ad-hoc market that buzzed seven days a week into the wee hours.
“It’s not really a fair system for anyone, but it allows for everyone to have equal access,” Kaufman-Gutierrez said, adding that vendors “still wanted to focus on equity amongst everyone in the association” despite the limited availability of stalls.
The self-organized Corona Plaza Street Vendor Association had represented 96 members but presently has 80 who intend to share the stalls. Others left after the vendors were evicted from the plaza, with some moving their business to different neighborhoods while others moved on from vending into service or construction jobs.
The new Corona Plaza vending area in effect creates an experimental alternative to the current citywide vendor permitting system, which has been capped for decades at 853 and 5,100 respectively for non–veteran merchandise and food vendors, leaving more than 11,000 other people stuck in an immovable waitlist.
While the City Council passed a law two years ago mandating the issuance of 445 new food vendor licenses annually starting in 2022, just 14 permits had been issued over the last year, a letter sent by the Mayor’s Office to Comptroller Brad Lander this September revealed.
Under the new set-up in Corona Plaza, merchandise vendors will be able to operate with a sales tax ID issued by the state, while food vendors will be able to tap into uncapped permits typically reserved for sellers on privately owned properties. So far, QEDC has submitted permit applications on behalf of about 34 vendors to operate in its space, the nonprofit’s executive director Seth Bornstein told THE CITY Wednesday.
“It’s a foundation,” said Kaufman-Gutierrez, who added that vendors would have to sign on to an agreement with the QEDC and abide by the vendor association’s rules. “It’s not the end-all-be-all. It’s not the perfect agreement.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said in October he would not sign off on clearances for a new soccer stadium in nearby Willets Point until the mayor returned vendors to Corona Plaza.
Richards had asked for 28 stalls. “Obviously, I didn’t get to the full number I wanted to get,” Richards told THE CITY Wednesday, saying that he hoped Corona Plaza’s new setup could serve as a model for markets elsewhere in the city. “I believe we will get up to that, we will continue to see the number increase.”
Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi said at a press conference on Tuesday that the administration would consider expanding the Community Vending Area model if this experiment proves successful during the initial test run. “That’s the point of the first four months — is to monitor and see how we can balance both the needs of local businesses, the people who want the pedestrian space in Corona Plaza, as well as the need for vending,” Joshi said.
‘I’m Surviving’
Rosario Troncoso, the vendor association’s 51-year-old president, said in her blue canopy stall Wednesday morning that she had been nervous about returning to Corona Plaza.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Troncoso told THE CITY in Spanish as dozens of backpacks and purses were displayed on tables in her stall. “I was nervous honestly, we didn’t know what the community’s reaction would be.”
Some local businesses had rallied aggressively against street vendors at the plaza ahead of their removal this summer, with many blaming them for quality-of-life complaints that ranged from trash to public intoxication and sex work solicitation.
To quell neighborhood concerns, QEDC has hired coordinators to enforce market rules and facilitate interactions between vendors and city agencies, said Bornstein.
“I’m much happier now because we are getting a positive reaction from the community,” Troncoso continued. “The only thing is, they’re asking for food vendors and we didn’t have any food vendors” — though some are expected to arrive in the coming weeks.
Limited for now to selling three days a week at Corona Plaza, Vivar and Campos said they would look to hawk in other neighborhoods on other days. Perhaps in front of their house in Corona. Perhaps at Plaza Tonatiuh in Sunset Park, in Brooklyn.
Other vendors, like Gaston Cortez, are still waiting for their turn to get back into the plaza. The 51-year-old vice president of the vendor association said he’s still waiting for his new food vending permit to be approved so he can return to work.
“It might take a couple more weeks,” Cortez said. “You know how the city works: when you think you got everything ready, there’s something else you gotta get.”
Cortez, who sells chilaquiles and tacos and Mexican soups along with his wife, said his food vending business had depended on the single working-class men in the neighborhood descending from the 7 train tracks from work to pick up food in the evening.
“It’s the best time to sell food — after 5. From 5, all the way to 11,” he said, adding that the association continues to push for more stalls and longer hours. “That’s the best time for food vendors. But unfortunately we can only be here from 9 to 8 p.m.”
Cortez said he’s been picking up odds and ends jobs to sustain himself and his family in the meantime — and will continue doing so to subsidize what looks to be part-time vending income moving forward. That means working as a day laborer in construction some days, and helping his brother install security cameras on others.
“I have a job tomorrow to do in the morning,” Cortez said. “So I’m surviving until we can open — hustling.”