A celebrated street food market will return, in a diminished state

Four months after New York City defunded a celebrated but largely illegal street market in Queens that had exploded in popularity during the pandemic, vendors are expected to return this week with far fewer stalls and, for now, none of the food that brought them high praise yielded. .

The Corona Plaza market, where once more than 80 vendors filled a block-wide public plaza each day, will reopen every Wednesday through Sunday with a rotating schedule of just 14 stalls, the mayor’s office announced Tuesday. For at least the first week, only merchandise vendors will return due to additional health and safety requirements that food vendors must meet.

The Queens Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit business development organization, said it had entered into a four-month contract with the city to manage the eclectic mix of vendors selling everything from tacos al pastor and aguas frescas to hard-to-find from Central. and South America.

Sanitation workers and police officers had dispersed the vendors in late July, amid growing concerns from some local residents and businesses that the square was becoming overcrowded, unsanitary and detrimental to brick-and-mortar stores.

To participate in the market under the new agreement, merchants must pay sales taxes quarterly and meet public safety requirements; Food vendors must also complete a food safety course. Several suppliers have already met the requirements, said Seth Bornstein, the group’s executive director.

The reduced number of stalls means that vendors who were once a fixture on the square will now appear much less frequently, forcing many of them to find second jobs. And no more than 10 of the 14 stalls will be allowed to serve food at a time, the mayor’s office said in a statement Tuesday.

The hope is to extend the contract, with the potential to add more vendors and longer hours, said Rosario Troncoso, the president of the Corona Plaza Street Vendors Association, the organization that represents the merchants.

“This is just the beginning,” Ms. Troncoso said in Spanish, adding that she was disappointed that so few stalls would return.

Mayor Eric Adams said in a statement that the arrangement balanced public health and safety with economic opportunities for merchants.

But the plan is a dramatic change for the vendors — most of them immigrant women, many undocumented — who found a lifeline in the informal market after a number of retail and hospitality jobs were lost during the height of the pandemic. In April, The New York Times named the square one of the best places to eat in the city.

To have just a handful of vendors return part-time “feels like a slap in the face,” said 40-year-old Ana Maldonado, who managed a tamales stand in the plaza.

Ms. Maldonado, who came to New York from Guerrero, Mexico, 20 years ago, got up at 3 a.m. most days to mix the masa for more than 200 tamales. When business went well, she could take home about $4,000 a month.

Her makeshift stall – a shopping cart with two steamers and thermoses filled with rice porridge and champurrado, a Mexican chocolate drink – provided her family’s entire income.

Since the closure, she has had to borrow from family and friends to pay her $2,500 a month rent. Her husband had to work part-time as a waiter while she looked for other places in town to reopen her cart.

“There’s a lot of anger” among vendors, she said.

Since city officials cracked down on the plaza, the vendors association has lost 15 members, some of whom have moved to other neighborhoods, Ms. Troncoso said.

The city’s plan nevertheless could become a model for other informal markets in New York, where vendors often operate illegally because they can’t obtain permits, said Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the Street Vendor Project, an organizing group for merchants .

It is virtually impossible to obtain the permits. As of September, the city had issued just 14 new food cart permits this year, despite a waiting list of more than 10,000 applicants. There are only about 5,100 mobile food vending permits in circulation citywide, due to a cap imposed in the 1980s, but the City Council passed a law in 2021 that would nearly double that number over the next decade.

The Corona Plaza scheme allows the vendors to operate legally even without those permits, provided they meet other safety and business requirements.

The scaled-down plan was the result of opposition from some residents and business owners who said the vendors were overcrowding the plaza and making it unsafe for pedestrians. The city received 78 complaints about illegal sales in the area through October of this year, compared to 17 complaints during the same period last year, the mayor’s office said.

“The square used to be out of control,” said Linda Hernández, 43, a Corona resident and manager of Sabor Guatemalteco, a restaurant on the square. “If there are only a few, it’s better for everyone in the neighborhood,” she said in Spanish.

Reaction among elected officials who had pushed for the vendors’ return was muted.

“I’m not shouting ‘victory lap,’” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, adding that the reduced number of spots would encourage some vendors to work illegally elsewhere. “If you want to see a decrease in illegal activities, you have to formalize this workforce.”

Raul Vilchis reporting contributed.