Los Angeles City College exchange meeting shuts down after short reboot

Rosa Sanchez walked into the Los Angeles City College exchange reunion with a $ 20 bill on a Sunday last month.

She came out with grapes, strawberries, cherries, a gray sweater, toothpaste, a pack of 16 AA batteries – and $ 6 change.

Now she will have to look for good deals elsewhere.

The weekend exchange meeting, which has occupied a parking lot on the East Hollywood Community College campus for more than 20 years, last opened on Sunday.

“When the community loses these important places, we all lose,” said Sanchez, 59, a housekeeper who lives nearby.

Like other exchange meetings, the one at LA City College closed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. It reopened over a year later, in April.

The San Fernando, Paramount and Vineland exchange meetings are among those now open. The exchange meeting at Los Angeles Harbor College resumed on July 4.

But at LA City College, the pandemic losses were too great to be overcome. Competition from sidewalk vendors has been the last straw, said Greg Danz, president and CEO of Newport Diversified, which manages the exchange meeting.

“It is very disappointing that this company is closing and we are not happy,” he said.

Vendors, both in the marketplace and on the sidewalk outside, say the fees Newport charged for a stand were outrageous.

Juan Carlos Perez, who has been selling second-hand clothing and electronics at the Exchange Reunion for 20 years, said he paid $ 2,000 for an important and busy location, in addition to the monthly reservation fee of $ 110 and a daily sales charge of $ 100.

Perez, 49, a FedEx driver who moved from El Salvador to Los Angeles in 1986, relies on the extra income to pay his bills.

He now has three or four months of goods stacked at home and no idea where he will sell them.

Sellers said they only received one week’s notice of the shutdown, which was the first reported by the Eastsider.

“If I had known they were going to stop, I wouldn’t have paid $ 2,000,” Perez said. “I cannot afford to give this money.

Danz said his company only charges the 140 or so vendors a daily and monthly fee, not thousands of dollars for a space.

The Los Angeles City College Foundation owns the site and will be looking for a new operator, said executive director Robert Schwartz.

The foundation, which receives 35% of the proceeds from the exchange meeting with the rest going to Newport, lost more than $ 650,000 in revenue when the pandemic closed, Schwartz said.

The money is generally used for the running costs of the foundation and for scholarships, including the Tutor scholarship program, which helps favor young people with tuition, meals and tutoring.

Over the past year, reserve funds have been used to pay for the scholarship program, which includes around 140 students.

In the months since the exchange meeting reopened, revenues fell by more than half, with the foundation receiving about $ 18,000 per month, compared to the usual $ 55,000.

Vendors were not charged any fees for the first month of reopening in April, Schwartz said. In July, around 80% of the stands were reserved.

Like Danz, Schwartz accused the street vendors of hastening the demise of the swap encounter.

During the pandemic shutdown, about 100 vendors settled on North Vermont Avenue and a few side streets, Schwartz said.

After the exchange meeting reopened, some paid the fees and went back inside. But, according to Schwartz, around 45 to 55 remained on the sidewalk.

Javier Sanchez was among those who moved his stall to the sidewalk as the exchange meeting closed.

Since reopening, he has sold used fluorescent jeans, khakis, shirts, blouses and vests inside the swap while maintaining his sidewalk stall.

Sanchez, 56, is an immigrant from Mexico who has been trading for over 20 years. Since 2015, it has been his only source of income. He said he would continue to operate a sidewalk stand.

Blaming the street vendors for the market closure is wrong, he said.

“We are all trying to survive and we only got one month of help,” he said of the April hiatus on swap fees. “It makes sense to sell outside and not pay all the extra costs.”

Danz said he was working with the office of Los Angeles City Councilor Mitch O’Farrell to enforce regulations banning street vendors from set up within 500 feet of an exchange meeting.

Dan Halden, a spokesperson for O’Farrell, said he believed officials at the LA Bureau of Street Services had warned sellers that they could not do business there. But Danz said there was no enforcement.

East Hollywood Neighborhood Council President Ninoska Suarez said street vendors left trash behind and made it difficult to navigate the sidewalk.

But she also understands their financial situation.

“They have to make a living, and it was more difficult during COVID-19,” she said.

She said she will miss the market, which was a place to get cheap essentials for low-income residents who, like vendors, have been hit hard by the pandemic. Her father did his shopping there every week.

“COVID-19 has been devastating for East Hollywood, and now it’s happening,” she said. “A lot of people are trying to get back on their feet, to survive, and that makes it worse.”