The news that the old familiar vendors at Turner Field are suing Atlanta over a plan that could regulate them out of business brought back memories of the city’s troubled policy toward street vending that goes a long way back in time indeed.
According to Atlanta’s City Code, ever since 1924 Atlanta’s public vending has been a way for small-time entrepreneurs with little capital, a lot of energy and a persuasive gift for words to make a living and even move up economically.
This was true, with some minor amendments, up until 1984 when “peddling” was opened up to citizens beyond the disabled veterans and widows originally allowed to sell (only) produce, and boys (not girls) under 16 selling flowers.
Of course not all public “peddlers” before 1984 were legal — the real reason for the ordinance. Public vending flourished all over downtown Atlanta and the nearby areas, much to the dismay of the established businesses and especially that anchor of middle-class business interests, Central Atlanta Progress, or CAP.
A lot of poor people, mostly African-American men, sold more than produce and flowers to other poor people; they sold incense, clothes such as dashikis, jewelry, handbags and the like. To CAP this all helped to “ghettoize” downtown, producing a bad appearance that would drive away tourists, investors and downtown developers.
It didn’t matter so much out at “the stadium” (as Turner Field was then called) where public vendors sold T-shirts, memorabilia and snacks. CAP focused on downtown.
I know, for I entered the public vending scene in 1989 with an AJC op-ed on Five Points that was taken up by the City Council’s Public Safety Committee just as they were considering a CAP-sponsored motion to abolish the vending sites around Five Points. The motion failed.
I was then appointed to the new Vending Review Board, and then elected chair just in time for us to draft the 1993 “Vending on Public Property” ordinance to recommend to this council committee.
I discovered along the way another effort to abolish vending sites at Five Points, Woodruff Park and downtown generally — this time by the city’s Bureau of Planning in league with CAP. Let us just say that it also failed.
Again, the public vendors at the stadium were left alone.
This all began to change in 2008 when Atlanta decided to create a private vending management program that would control all public vending, whether downtown, at Centennial Olympic Park, or at Turner Field. A revenue booster for the city, we were told!
The public space now would be rented to the citizens for a high price; the management company would build big-box vending kiosks (that coincidentally didn’t hold much merchandise) covered with advertising and give 5 percent of the ad revenues to the city; and all citizens wishing to vend on public property would be chosen by the private company and told what to sell from the kiosks. Coincidentally, for the first time since public vending had been codified in 1924, it was opened to corporate franchises.
Atlanta has indeed built the dark green big boxes around Woodruff Park and Five Points Plaza downtown, and most of the previous vendors there left.
But now it is approaching Turner Field to construct more. Two public vendors there are going to court with the backing of the Institute of Justice, arguing that the city has violated the constitutional right of ordinary citizens to earn a livelihood.
They have supported their families in this way for about 30 years each, and believe that, as citizens of Atlanta, they have the right to continue vending on this public right of way.
I couldn’t agree more.
Christine Gallant, a retired English professor at Georgia State University, chaired the Atlanta Vending Review Board from 1992 to 1993.
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