What’s Possible

Despite the doom and gloom of my last post, the possibility of improving the regulation of vending does exist. In the most recent session of the City Council, Intro. 1301-2016 was proposed (http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=2858236&GUID=EFEAD05C-4A4E-47E3-ACDA-ADEAA0FB3F2A&Options=ID%7cText%7c&Search=vending), a report was issued and a hearing was held. The Council’s press release summarized the bill’s provisions and the Council’s objectives in proposing it (http://labs.council.nyc/press/2016/10/11/124/). The upshot of the legislation is to double the number of food vendor permits. No action has yet been taken by the Council on the bill. The precatory language of the bill, and the language of the press release reflect the substantial interest on the part of Council members in promoting vending and the limited recognition of or interest in the negative impact vending has on downtown revitalization efforts.

In the late 90’s a number of us, including Liz Lusskin, then of the Downtown Alliance, and Ray Levin, of the Fischbein Badillo law firm, worked together to craft a scheme that would attempt to comprehensively improve the location and regulation of all types of vending (food, general, printed material, disabled veterans). The bill was introduced by then Council Member Ken Fisher as Into. 110-1998 (http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=430534&GUID=4CE1810C-8F2A-4489-B3D3-BD5FE9A23ADC&Options=ID%7cText%7c&Search=110). In drafting our bill we tried to be particularly sensitive to the Constitutional protection of First Amendment activity. Hopeless romantic that I am, I still believe that the proposal has merit.

Intro. 110 was based on what we called a “warrant” system, whereby vendors would be assigned specific spots from which to vend, and those spots would be limited to one on a block front, with a list of blocks from which all vending would be excluded. The idea was both to limit congestion and to associate particular vendors with particular spots, which we though might provide a greater incentive for vendors to raise the level of capital investment in their carts and thereby improve their physical presentation and product offerings. We were particularly interested promoting the ability of business improvement districts to partner with vendors within their districts in making such improvements. Our proposal was assigned to the Council’s Transportation Committee where it languished.

Another Idea

I spent a good deal of time thinking about how to improve the character and quality of vending in Downtown Jamaica when I was working there. Mostly we played “whack-a-mole” with illegal vending – when the police occasionally devoted staff to vending enforcement. Greater Jamaica Development Corporation had resources available to it that gave potential for assisting vendors in improving their businesses and quality of life. GJDC had long operated a revolving small business loan fund, which made loans of up to $300,000 to what we called “nearly bankable” small businesses on favorable terms. It seemed to me that these funds could be used to enable vendors to upgrade their carts – if we could be sure that those carts would remain in Downtown Jamaica. My thought was that perhaps we could develop an attractive high quality prototype cart or carts on which we would be willing to make loans – secured by the carts. The carts might also provide a level of uniformity that might help in “branding” the Downtown.

Building a relationship with vendors through the loan program, might also have provided an opportunity for GJDC’s Business Services team to work with the vendors to improve the quality and diversity of their offerings in order to both better serve workers, shoppers and visitors to Jamaica and to improve vendors’ bottom line results.

          GJDC also operated five parking facilities in the Downtown, including three garages. It was my thought that we could make space available in our facilities for the overnight storage of mobile food carts – making it easier for vendors to operate in Downtown Jamaica. The storage areas might be outfitted with restroom and commissary facilities for their use. Under current practice, vendors have no such facilities available to them – presumably having a significant impact on the quality of the hygiene they are able to practice in plying their wares. Providing running water, and perhaps even refrigeration, might also improve the quality and diversity of offerings vendors could provide.

The quid pro quo for providing such facilities to vendors for no or low-cost would have been to work out a locational arrangement that would move the vendors off of Jamaica Avenue and the main north-south streets on to side streets, and perhaps limit their number at any single location – improving pedestrian circulation and the appearance of the Downtown. The ideal ultimate result of such an initiative would be better located, better looking, cleaner, more hygienic vending providing a more varied and interesting range of food and other offerings – making them a distinctive and attractive feature of Downtown Jamaica. My idea was for all of this to happen cooperatively as a voluntary arrangement worked out between the vendors, GJDC and the local BIDs – much like the agreement that created the multiple-vend newsrack regime that we set-up at Grand Central Partnership in midtown in order to eliminate the blight of hundreds of individual newsracks.

          The other big idea that I thought might benefit the Downtown was to close a central block (which ended in T-intersections at both ends) to traffic from 11 AM to 8 PM to create an outdoor food market; perhaps featuring both food trucks and carts as well as movable tables and seating. Despite some considerable efforts and our very high level of pedestrian activity we were unable to attract high quality food trucks to locate in the Downtown. My thought was by creating a unique outdoor food venue we might be able to draw a higher quality of vendor, and new visitors, to Jamaica. Again, a best-case scenario would include being in a position to curate the food offerings – rotating vendors and selecting the most imaginative and highest quality offerings as the market’s economic viability proved itself.

These projects would have required a high level of cooperation not only between the many vendors and the local non-profits, but also with the Police Department and the Departments of Transportation, Health and Consumer Affairs – which all have jurisdiction over vending. A project like this would also require buy-in from local merchants (most of whom are generally hostile to vending) and the affected community board (which is generally at the vanguard of trying to control under-regulated commercial activity in public spaces). A scheme like this, if successful in Jamaica, could provide a template for other New York City commercial corridors, like Flushing, Downtown Brooklyn and The Hub in the Bronx.

          None of this is very likely to happen, given the amount of work that would be involved in coordinating it, and particularly given the difficulty of persuading a critical mass of vendors to participate. But given the concerns I raised in my last post, I thought it was incumbent on me to offer up some positive suggestions. Creating such a program is certainly no more difficult than the replacement of scattered newsracks with a voluntary, organized system of well-maintained multiple-vend racks that we were able to implement in Manhattan. I hope to describe the process by which that program was created in future post.