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Community leaders have launched a task force to address street vending – both legal and illegal – in Northern Manhattan, including along the busy intersection of St. Nicholas Avenue and W. 181st Street. PHOTO: Mike Fitelson
A group of about 50 community leaders met Thurs., July 14th to tackle the complex issue of street vending in Northern Manhattan, which congests sidewalks, draws customers away from storefront businesses, poses health and safety issues, yet provides incomes for hundreds of workers and offers convenient and affordable shopping for area residents.
Judging from the heated exchanges during the meeting at Community Board 12, it is an issue that does not look to be solved quickly or easily.
Presentations by the city’s Departments of Consumer Affairs, Health and Mental Hygiene, and Transportation outlined the complexity of the regulations, with different agencies responsible for licensing different types of vending.
Officially, there are about 6,000 licensed vendors in the entire city, including 853 general license permits, about 3,000 for food vendors, and about 2,000 for veterans. It is also estimated that there are thousands more vendors who operate without a license. Additionally, city representatives said that only the person who receives the license is allowed to vend, which means that it is illegal for anyone else to accept money for a sidewalk transaction.
The police are responsible for enforcement.
While street vending is a citywide issue, it seems to be on the rise in Northern Manhattan, particularly in the busy West 181st Street corridor where pedestrians must sometimes make acrobatic moves to navigate sidewalks while avoiding carts and tables.
The goal of the task force, which is being led by CB12 chair Ebenezer Smith, is to build consensus about how, when, and where street vending should occur in Northern Manhattan.
“You are here because you want to resolve the problem,” Smith told the group. “We have the capability to resolve this problem. We can’t pass this problem to the next generation.”
City Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez outlined a solution that begins with inventorying the existing number of vendors, creates an education and awareness campaign, identifies new locations for vending to occur, and ends with strict enforcement.
If vendors are given the opportunity to relocate and they do not do so, Rodriguez said, “then I will go 100 percent to law enforcement.”
By meeting’s end, the group had divided into three committees. One will take a census of vendors in the next couple of months to identify the size of the problem. The mid-range committee will create vending zones and a blueprint for handling enforcement, education, and permitting. The long-range committee will identify new marketplaces where vending can occur, using as a model La Plaza de las Americas on W. 175th Street at Broadway, created in the 1990’s to relocate street vendors from W. 181st Street.
But this plan did not mollify the concerns of many in the room.
Law enforcement representatives, from Captain Brian Mullen, commanding officer of the 33rd Police Precinct, to Columbia University’s public safety officers, argued that they cannot selectively enforce illegal vending activity, and insisted that compromises will add additional layers to an already Byzantine set of regulations.
Washington Heights and Inwood Chamber of Commerce President Peter Walsh, who has made street vending the number one issue of his two-year presidency, said enforcing existing laws was the fastest way to help out tax paying storefront businesses that are hurt by street vending.
“I received more phone calls about this meeting than any other,” he said. “I can’t join the committee because I will be betraying the people that I represent.”
Another wrinkle that must be ironed out is the contentious relationship between legal and illegal vendors.
Ahmed Soliman has had a permit to operate a food cart at Fort Washington Avenue and W. 168th Street for over 20 years, which has provided him the income to send his three children to college to be doctor, pharmacist, and engineer.
He angrily objected to being considered part of the problem if he was following all of the city’s rules.
His solution: “If they [the vendors] are illegal, kick them out.”
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