Newsstand Vendors Appeal to Council To Alter ‘Street Furniture’ Law

The owner of the newsstand at the corner of Broadway and Chambers streets in Lower Manhattan, Michael Patel, wants the city to reverse a law it passed last year that he says would drive him out of business.The new law, which was passed by the City Council and signed by Mayor Bloomberg, would turn over ownership of his rundown green facade to a yet-to-be-selected company.Because it would require room for a wheelchair behind the racks of newspapers, magazines, and candy, however, it would violate another city regulation that requires enough space for pedestrians to get by on the sidewalk.“It will put me out of business,” Mr. Patel said yesterday during a news conference at a crowded corner next to his business.Newsstand vendors including Mr. Patel appealed to the council yesterday to support a bill introduced by Council Member Hiram Monserrate of Queens that would repeal part of the city’s larger “street furniture” law. The law, which is being challenged in state Supreme Court, will give a private company ownership of the city’s 281 newsstands and 3,200 bus shelters, as well as of 20 new public toilets. The company would be granted a 20-year contract to create sleeker-looking, uniform newsstands and to operate the other “furniture” that adorns the city’s streets.If and when the law goes into effect, this is how it would work: Newsstand owners will pay no fees to the company. The company will sell advertising space on the outside of the structures and split the revenues with the city.The New York City Newsstand Operation Association said yesterday that between 60 and 70 of the 281 vendors – more than 20% of the industry – would be put out of business if the law goes into effect. The lawyer for the association, Robert Bookman, said the Bloomberg administration provided inaccurate information to the council last year when it presented its proposal and “contorted” the number of newsstands that would be affected by the new regulations.According to the administration, only a dozen of the 281 newsstand operators would have to make changes to their structures and only one would have to relocate.The association said the city should move forward with its plan but exclude newsstands. Mr. Bookman said the newsstands should never have been included because the structures are owned by individuals, not by the city.The administration, which did not testify yesterday, citing the pending lawsuit, has said the program is a “win-win” for the city and the newsstand operators.“When the street furniture process is finished, operators will have brand new, beautifully designed stands for free,” a spokesman for the city’s Department of Transportation, Kay Sarlin, said. “Their stands will be cleaned and maintained by the franchisee, and the operators will continue to only pay $538 per year to operate on city streets.”The Bloomberg administration has said contracting out the operations would bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in new advertising revenue and get rid of the current dilapidated newsstands.That rationale does not fly with newsstand operators. They say that while the law requires that all newsstands be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, it fails to recognize that a standard wheelchair does not clear the three feet that the administration provides for the structures’ width.“What we have now learned is that they will have to shrink the size of dozens of existing newsstands to the point where they can no longer serve effectively as places of business with human beings inside,” Mr. Bookman, who set up a mock newsstand at City Hall to demonstrate the problem, said.The assistant general counsel for the New York Times, George Freeman, sided with the newsstand owners during yesterday’s hearing. He said anything that would reduce the number of newsstands would have a negative effect on both the newspaper industry and the “interests of an informed citizenry.”“New York has already seen an extreme shrinkage from about 1,500 newsstands in the heyday, when we had seven daily newspapers, to 300 at the time of Local Law 64,” Mr. Freeman told the council.

Newsstand Vendors Appeal to Council To Alter ‘Street Furniture’ Law

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