Convert the vendors’ mall into a parking lot

Jan 22, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Just how many approved vendors are currently operating from the Vendors’ Mall on Water Street? I do not believe that more than thirty are at the moment.
There may be more than thirty persons on location at any one time but some of these are workers of the vendors who were originally assigned lots. Many of those who were assigned lots deeper within the mall have abandoned those lots because they claim that shoppers do not go into the facility, preferring to patronize those stalls on the perimeter of the mall.
This has become a standard excuse for vendors all over the country. Any market that is built is subject to the same complaint. Vendors opt to sell by the roadside because they claim that the persons nearest to the entrances of the markets get the sales and they, who are deeper within the market, do not.
There is some legitimacy to this complaint. But there is also a solution. Once the markets are made viable and more accessible, people will go into them to shop. Right now there are vendors squatting on the pavements and selling out of parked vehicles and this is affecting the viability of markets and vendors’ malls.
One solution would be to design and regulate these malls in such a way as to encourage shoppers to go into them, while ruthlessly stamping out illegal vending.
The viability of the markets has been destroyed through expansion. In the case of both Bourda and Stabroek Markets, locations annexed to the original structures have been parceled out to vendors thus affecting business within the market proper.
Why would any shopper wish to go into the market to shop when he or she can get the same product from the annexes which are open lots? An additional problem, more pronounced on the Bourda Green, is that stalls have been built in what were originally passageways. Thus, what we have is a narrowing of space and an increase in the number of sellers within the markets. This problem is compounded by the competition that is provided by pavement and roadside vending.
We have at this time within our markets large numbers of abandoned stalls. In hundreds of other cases, owners are simply in a “holding” mode, operating at a loss but holding on to their stalls hoping that things will get better.
Things are not going to get better unless shortsightedness is corrected. Hundreds of illegal pavement vendors are being allowed to peddle their wares at the expense of an almost similar amount of legitimate market vendors whose business are suffering because of these illegal vendors.
The absurdity is that everyone loses in this situation. The lawful vendors are not making money, the pavement vendors are also running into debts each day because what they sell cannot even cover their minimal expenses, and the City Council is losing because the number of absentee stallholders in the markets and vendors’ malls is hurting their revenue base.
What is therefore needed is a plan to make the markets more viable and this must begin by prohibiting illegal vending both on the pavements, roadside and also within the markets because there are a great many persons who have set up illegal structures outside the markets.
The markets need a stimulus package, not through an injection of cash, but through increased business; and this can only happen if all forms of illegal vending is outlawed.
In the case of the Vendors’ Mall on Water Street, purchased with tax payers funds for a large sum of money, there needs to be a complete rethink.
Whatever you can get at one stall, you can be almost certain to get at another. Almost everyone in that mall is selling the same product. In a small economy like Guyana, we cannot have so many persons selling the same thing.
If the Mayor and City Council wants to help those that have remained, it should take a head count of those that are still operating and form them into an association. They should then ask them to all dismantle their stalls.
The spacious facility should then be converted to a paid car park charging a fee of $50 per hour for parking. My own calculation is that given the size of this facility, the proposed association can raise about $40,000 per day from parking fees. Six days per week, four weeks per month and we are looking at $1M per month in revenue.
I am sure that with the commercial banks and major department stores in that area, arrangements can be cemented that would allow for staff of those business to have reserved parking for a fee which will be guaranteed by the businesses.
After working hours, the park can be contracted out to a wash bay thereby earning additional revenue and on Sundays, breakfast can be sold under a big tent. This will make money since quite a number of persons now are eating out on Sunday mornings.
The net return to the vendors may not be that much but it will be far more than they are making now, and for a far less investment than having to rebuild new stalls.

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