February 20, 1999

Vendors in Chinatown Park Protest Eviction

By PAUL ZIELBAUER

t was a conflict that had been stewing for months and, with a flourish of defiant chants and a brief blockade of rush-hour traffic in Chinatown, it boiled over Friday. Dozens of Chinese immigrants rallied on the grounds of Sara Delano Roosevelt Park to protest their eviction from the closed Dragon Gate Market there.

The lease for the market was terminated in December by the city, which cited late rent payments and said the vendors' stalls, some of which resembled permanent structures, violated building codes. Although Friday was the deadline for vendors to move out, a State Supreme Court issued a last-minute temporary stay of eviction to give them extra time to pack up.

But Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern pushed forward, announcing a plan to relocate the vendors to other spots in Chinatown. He said he had originally envisioned the market as an open-air bazaar, filled with peddlers and portable pushcarts.

"Instead," he said Friday, "they started building iron buildings."

One vendor, Haa Yung Chao, 48, said he had spent $16,000 in early January to build and open a stall that sold Chinese snacks.

"I don't know what I'm going to do if I can't work here," he said, "because I'm older, and it's hard for me to find another job." Since it opened in 1994, the market at the park, at Grand and Chrystie Streets, has become a lodestone for controversy, pitting hardscrabble peddlers who hawk Chinese food, plants and other wares against the City Department of Parks and Recreation, which controls the land, and Century 21, the real-estate company that leased the grounds from the city and sublet spaces to vendors.

In two years, Stern's inspectors have issued 23 citations to Century 21 after finding that stalls violated building codes. The city also cited some vendors for dumping garbage and illegally tapping into electric and water lines.

In December, after Century 21 fell behind in rent payments, which total at least $26,000 a year, the agency terminated the lease.

"The vendors are trying to portray this as the vendors against the city, letting some of the middle guys off the hook," said Tom Castele, a spokesman for City Councilwoman Kathryn E. Freed, whose district includes Roosevelt Park. "The problem is, there's some serious violations going on," he said. "They're not supposed to put up permanent structures. They did."

The peddlers said they would be left with nowhere to sell. After chanting "Stern must go," a group of protesters linked arms and strode into Grand Street, blocking traffic for about five minutes. Coaxed by the police, they returned to the market, where a few dozen other protesters joined them in denouncing Stern and Century 21. "Century 21 knew very well that we needed to fix certain things, but they didn't notify us," said Chi Mui, 52, who has sold plants from his stall at the market for the last 18 months.

Stern said Century 21 was to blame. "Many of the vendors have been swindled, been taken advantage of by the licensee, Century 21," he said.

"These are good people. But you can't take over a city block."

Century 21 is blaming the vendors.

"We are facing a lot of resistance from vendors," said Kalvin Lee, a former manager at Century 21 who responded yesterday to a telephone call to the company seeking comment.

"The Parks Department has done a great deal to accommodate them, but some of the vendors there are very unreasonable," he said. "They have literally built small houses to do business."

"I think at that point," Lee added, "Century 21 lost control."