Bronx Terminal vendors face eviction

Bronx Terminal vendors face eviction

Newsday
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN
STAFF WRITER
May 29, 2005
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/bronx/nyc-term0529,0,3128476.story?coll=nyc-swapbox1


With dawn barely a memory under the Deegan, the first gates at the Bronx
Terminal Market roll up. Panel trucks rattle across the Belgian
cobblestones over a bed made of hundreds of oak and pine pilings.

Steve Trombetta, 65, the third of four generations who have run a store
since 1930, stands at his familiar post, a rickety steel podium, with his
tools: a pen and a stack of carbon paper-backed order sheets. He scrawls
out an order, tears it off and calls out to an employee.

"We're just going to wait it out and see how long it goes," said the
taciturn Trombetta, between orders. "They are looking at the Olympic
picture. Here, we're talking about 22 businesses. We're here 24/7."

Trombetta is talking about the Bloomberg administration plan that would
evict him and nearly two dozen other merchants, demolish the ramshackle
market born and bred more than 70 years ago under Mayor John Hylan and
later Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and replace it with a large suburban-style
mall.

The project is a venture of developer Stephen Ross of the Related Cos., the
Olympics fund-raiser close to Daniel Doctoroff, deputy mayor for economic
development. It is backed by a generous package of tax incentives and
subsidies from the city Economic Development Corp.

An engine for development

The battle over the market has been largely overlooked amid the controversy
over the West Side stadium proposal. But it is now shaping up into an epic
struggle all its own.

Represented by a former judge and a former counsel to the Helmsley real
estate empire, the merchants have mounted an effective court fight to force
the city to sweeten its incentives to relocate them. They say the
$8-million relocation package offered to date is not enough to move large
operations, and would also scatter them throughout the city.

City officials say the conflict is a distraction from the enormous benefits
of the project as an engine for Bronx economic development.

"We feel this is a tremendous boost to the Bronx community," said EDC
spokesman Michael Sherman. "This neighborhood has been under-served for the
last 30 years. We believe this project will create 5,000 jobs for the
community, and the developer is willing to invest $300 million in the
community."

The new mall would erase what some see as an eyesore. The number of stores
has dwindled over the decades, and the place badly needs a paint job and a
thorough cleaning.

Yet the merchants revel in their old-fashioned ways. Ralph Lelia, who sells
flowers and watermelons, still uses handwritten ledger books and a manual
adding machine, which are housed in a refrigerator-sized, 1940s-era safe.
There isn't a computer in the place.

Lelia boasts that his only concession to technology at the business his
father started is a fax machine.

Lelia remembers the old rail cars, which used to bring produce into the
market, and he has heard stories of the "farmers' restaurant," which turned
into a risque after-hours joint.

"This market was viable then, and it's viable now," Lelia said. "New York
is one of the last places where small businesses thrive. There's a
uniqueness here you won't see elsewhere."

Gus Tyras, 45, founded his business with his brother Michael in 1983 at age
20. In the beginning, he ran things out of his bedroom, with one truck and
two phone lines. The business grew to three trucks, and they moved into the
market in 1987.

Today, Tyras' operation has 17 trucks, more than 100 employees and
locations at the terminal market and at Hunts Point. "People come here for
cash-and-carry," he said. "They come across to me for the restaurant
supplies, and they will go down the block for something else. That's why
we're fighting this."

Over the decades, the original merchants, usually of Italian and Jewish
descent, have watched as spots have been assumed first by Puerto Rican and
Dominican entrepreneurs and, most recently, by West Africans.

The Bronx market has become a key distribution point for African-owned
businesses around the country, said merchant Cecilia Nketiah, 49. "It's
like a chain, and if one falls off, then everyone is hurt," she said. "We
are making a contribution to the economy. I don't see why they should
minimize our impact."

Nketiah already had a successful business in her hometown of Accra, Ghana,
when she decided to come to the United States and open an outlet selling
African food and other items at the Bronx market in 2000. She obtained a
business visa and plunged some $250,000 into the venture. Now she fears all
will be lost.

"For someone like me to open a new store, I needed three years to break
even," she said from Accra by phone. "Whatever I invested, I won't get it
back, and I'll have to start all over again."

Nketiah is in Ghana visiting her children, whom she sent home after the
eviction threat emerged. "When the future became uncertain, I decided to
bring them here," she said. "If it works out well, I will bring them back.
If it doesn't work out, it will affect myself, my children and every dream
we ever had."

Concerned for his future

Daniel Ahenkora, 67, moved to the United States from Ghana in 1979, and
later left a job as a dividend clerk on Wall Street to open his own produce
market.

"If you work for someone, you know pay is coming," he said. "If you do your
own business, it takes more hours and more effort in order to survive. I
thought it was more exciting and more challenging." Ahenkora, who has nine
children, sells exotic items like palm oil, cassava grits, fu fu powder,
smoked fish, smoked shrimp and root bitters. His clients come from the
tristate area and states from Texas to Michigan.

But the eviction fight has left him concerned. "I have been looking around
but I don't see a good location," he said. "If I relocate by myself, I
would be out of business in a month. If it is a central market, everyone
knows where to go."

For now, the merchants' lawsuit has created an uneasy truce of sorts.
Related has agreed not to aggressively pursue eviction pending the outcome
of the case.

Until then, merchants like Salvatore Paolillo will simply have to wait.
Twenty years ago, Paolillo, 75, was a produce buyer for The Plaza hotel,
when he had the idea to sell Yankee gear within view of Yankee Stadium. He
rented a corner spot in the market, and spent $50,000 to install glass
display windows and roll-up gates in the space.

But he soon learned that Yankees fans on their way to games don't stop and
shop. The business failed, and Paolillo was stuck with debts. So he decided
to start selling tomatoes and other produce.

Somehow he made it work.

"I thought I was going to be a millionaire," he said. "I lost my shirt.
When the wind blows that way, you have to follow the wind. You can't go
against the wind."