Mercado Plan for Outdoor Stalls Opposed

As far as Melanie Erickson and her friends from Hacienda Heights are concerned, El Mercado de Los Angeles is the perfect place to eat Mexican cuisine and revel in Mexican culture.

“The food’s great and the people here are wonderful,” the 35-year-old computer programmer says of the Mexican-themed marketplace in Boyle Heights.

But some residents, who have lived with the familiar landmark on East 1st Street near Lorena Street for many years, see it as a nightmare.

“It’s a cesspool,” said one neighbor, Diana Tarango. “We want the owner to clean up his act.”

Their unhappiness has been heightened by a zoning proposal by El Mercado’s owner, Pedro Rosado, who is seeking a variance to construct permanent booths at the rear of the marketplace for 45 outdoor vendors to sell toys, baseball caps, fruits, juices and other food.

The proposal has the residents on Cheesbrough Lane up in arms. They already think El Mercado is a lousy neighbor.

They complain about cars of Mercado visitors blocking their driveways, about blaring live music from the Mercado’s upstairs restaurants that goes far into the night, rowdy patrons who drink too much and make too much noise and leave too much trash in nearby parking lots, drug use in plain view of area children, and prostitution.

Rosado dismisses the complaints as unfounded and says neighbors have rebuffed his efforts to make peace. “I don’t know why they hate me so much,” he says.

It’s an age-old question for anyone who lives near a popular metropolitan spot: How do you coexist with a place like El Mercado, which draws as many as 30,000 visitors a month?

“Are the folks near the Coliseum always happy with it?” asks Sal Altamirano, El Mercado’s director of community relations, who follows up on residents’ complaints. “How about the people near Dodger Stadium? It isn’t easy, but we try.”

The new stalls Rosado wants to construct would replace tents and other makeshift shelters vendors now operate from. Other merchants have established places inside the three-story marketplace.

Rosado sees the project as a chance to legitimize the outdoor vendors, virtually all of them immigrants from Mexico.

“All I’m trying to do is help these people,” said Rosado, himself an immigrant from the Mexican state of Yucatan. “How can you raise your hand against a working person? What kind of person does that?” The outdoor vendors “are just trying to feed their families. What’s wrong with that?”

That argument does not resonate with Rosado’s working-class Latino neighbors on streets such as Cheesbrough who say their fight is not with the vendors but El Mercado management.

“We are against the conditions we are subjected to,” said Nadine Diaz, a third-generation Eastsider. “We are constantly calling [the police and El Mercado management] about trash that has to be picked up. I shouldn’t have to call to have them do that. There’s noise, too many cars.

Cheesbrough resident Rita Rodriguez says she has to leave her home and go cruising to get away from the blaring music. “It’s the only way I can calm down,” she said.

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A city zoning administrator has rejected Rosado’s application for a variance to construct the decorative booths, or puestos, ruling that Rosado allowed the outdoor vendors to do business in violation of city zoning and health regulations. Rosado has appealed the rejection. If he cannot overturn it, he will have to stop all outdoor sales.

Recently, residents presented Rosado with a list of nearly 50 demands, including closing off a Mercado entrance on Cheesbrough to reduce traffic congestion on the narrow street. Rosado has agreed to all but one of the conditions--he won’t move the outdoor vendors from a rear walkway where they do business now, contending that that would interfere with his plan to give the vendors a permanent place to sell their wares.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who represents the area and whose opinion may influence the decision on the outdoor booths, says that he supports building booths for some outdoor vendors but that 45 vendors are too many.

This is not the first time complaints have reached City Hall about El Mercado.

Back in 1975, seven years after it opened, the marketplace was temporarily placed in receivership after then-Los Angeles City Atty. Burt Pines sought to have it declared a public nuisance because repeated demands for building improvements had gone unheeded.

Residents contend that the same neglect holds true today.

“It’s an eyesore in this community,” commented neighbor Tarango, who says her years with the United Neighborhoods Organization helped her mobilize residents against El Mercado.

Long ago, the notion of a Mexican-style marketplace in Boyle Heights appealed to many.

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Two brothers, Ben and Arturo Chayra, went door to door in many Eastside neighborhoods in the mid-1960s looking for seed money. Their pitch was simple: Invest what you can in a cooperative to establish El Mercado. Each share would only cost $1. Many residents like Tarango readily invested.

About $240,000 was collected and used to help get the marketplace off the ground. Eventually, a federal loan of nearly $2 million from the Small Business Administration made the marketplace building a reality. It opened in 1968.

However, it quickly ran into problems. Some businesses went bankrupt. Management officials couldn’t keep up with payments on the SBA loan. Investors soured and demanded their money back.

Rosado, 60, who came to the United States in 1968 and got his first job as a janitor at the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner, came to El Mercado in 1971 and took over a bookstore on the second floor. He thrived there, eventually earning enough money to take over six food stands on the third floor and consolidating them in a restaurant with a large dining area.

He became the marketplace’s general manager in 1977 and its sole owner in 1986, buying out the rest of the original investors.

Along the way, he has enraged some people. In 1980, he was shot at twice in separate incidents near El Mercado. He lost portions of two fingers on his right hand in one attack. No one was arrested in connection with those incidents, and Rosado these days just waves off talk about it. “That’s part of doing business in L.A.,” he shrugs.

“He’s the guy who doesn’t publicize all the good he does for people,” said marketplace community relations director Altamirano. “He gives [outdoor] vendors jobs when no one else will. He gives out scholarships to students who need help.”

As Altamirano went on praising Rosado on a recent afternoon, a young woman interrupted to get her scholarship check from Rosado.

“See what I mean?” Altamirano said.

Vendors share the feeling.

“Mr. Rosado is a generous man who is willing to give the vendors a chance,” said Salado Concepcion, who sells fruit drinks.

Residents contend that Rosado is taking advantage of vendors.

“It isn’t us versus the vendors,” said Diaz. “We’re against Mr. Rosado and how he conducts his business.”