By Arnon Adams
For the 170 occupants of the New Water Street Vendors Mall Saturday, October 3 marked the close of a long and arduous chapter in their respective lives. Simultaneously, last Saturday’s official opening of the spanking new facility heralded the start of a new beginning as fledgling business owners in a commercial environment filled with both challenge and promise.
- Spanking new: The front façade of the New Vendors’ Mall. Inset is Arcade Committee Member and stallholder Shirley Khan
Last Monday there was an air of breeziness about the environment inside the Mall. Most of vendors had begun to trade from their new stalls long before last Saturday’s opening. Monday, however, felt different. The ‘christening’ of the Mall had conferred upon their businesses a stamp of officialdom and as one bright-eyed owner of a packed cosmetics store declared “from today we really feel that we are in business.”
You would have had to have visited the Mall in its rundown days to get a sense of the transformation that has occurred, to understand just how far its occupants have come.
- Signpainter Darrell Cummings
The front of the facility bordered by a decorative metal gate and a front row of stalls sporting advertising signs for a range of product distributors lends a façade of attractiveness to the Mall, banishing the foreboding appearance of just a few months ago. Inside, neat rows of stalls are separated by paved passageways; what used to be a dark, cavernous and mosquito-infested interior is bright and encouraging.
Shirley Khan is a member of the Committee responsible for the vendors’ welfare and herself the owner of one of a row of small snackettes in the food court towards the back of the facility. She has been in the vending business for more than fifteen years, first, on the streets then inside the old arcade selling haberdashery. She has finally settled on the food business and on playing her part in creating a new and hopefully better life for the occupants and their families. The Committee, she says, is serious about its responsibility for ensuring that the Mall sets and maintains high standards.
- Debbie and Lindon and their grandson Errol
Shirley is optimistic too that the New Vendors Mall will “catch on” with shoppers. She talks about the need for the vendors to beautify the facility, pointing to the row of plants outside her own snackette. She believes, she says, that it is up to the vendors themselves “to do things to bring people into the Mall.”
The Mall provides a compelling sense of the drive and enterprise of ordinary working class Guyanese women. All of the stalls that we visited were managed by women, a few in partnership with their male partners and most of them on their own. Some of them were intimately involved in construction work on the stalls. Each of these women has a worthwhile story to tell, stories of tough starts, on one city pavement or another, jousting with each other for patronage and gradually learning the ropes including how to handle the excesses of the City Police charged with keeping the pavements free of vendors.
Samantha Roman or Sweet Samantha as she prefers to be called is a feisty and engaging woman, a streetwise vendor who engaged me in an absorbing conversation about her own life on the pavements, her brushes with the constables, the financial challenges that she has faced in building her own stall inside the Mall and her optimism about the future, Samantha has three children, lives in Sophia and, she says, beckoning extravagantly to the assorted clothing inside her stall, she is looking forward to Christmas sales.
Others, too, have similar stories to tell like Debbie and Lindon in their `One Love boutique’, Eulene McRae, Paulette Solomon, Mark Sanford and Maitland Henry among others. All are stall holders in the new arcade, all have come from tough starts and all are optimistic about their new start.
Last Monday too I met Errol Brisport, the recently retired Deputy Clerk of Markets and the municipality’s Project Manager for the Arcade. Brisport is an amiable man whose good relationship with the vendors is obvious. For much of our stay in the facility he escorted us from one area to another, engaging stall holders in conversations from time to time about issues that still need fixing. Without much to shout about these days the municipality clearly regards the Mall as a huge bee in its bonnet. It reflects, Brisport says, just what the city can become if we put our minds to it.
One of the outstanding issues about which Brisport speaks is the installation of electricity inside the Mall. The food court area is already serviced by existing electrical installations. The rest of the facility must await the completion of sheds above the passageways that must be built to keep the rain out. The absence of electricity is “an issue.” Inside, the stalls are dark, a decided disadvantage particularly for those vendors offering clothing for sale. Today, however, not even concerns over electricity can dim their enthusiasm. Brisport says that the Council needs to find around $1.7m to provide a generator and while the funds are being processed he is cautious about volunteering a deadline for the supply of electricity. “Perhaps in a few months,” he says. The vendors say that before Christmas is a must.
The lavatory facilities at the Mall is also an issue under discussion. It is, Brisport says, a public sanitary block but managing its use and maintenance is a concern. The Council is contemplating contracting out the management of the facility and charging a nominal fee for its use. The vendors don’t seem to mind paying; for the time being at least they appear preoccupied with starting out on the right footing.
People should visit the Vendors Arcade. It is a compelling example of a spirit of enterprise that has risen, with little help from the mainstream business community, above adversity and challenge. The vendors, the new small business owners, are thoroughly deserving of the support and, particularly, the patronage of the consuming public. There has been no sign yet of any diligent lobby from the various private sector bodies for public support for the Mall. Hopefully, it will come; it has to come.
Most of the stalls are still identified only by their numbers. There are trading names to be painted on signs and mounted outside the respective business places. Darrel Cummings, a middle-aged sign painter appears to have cashed in on the niche. On Monday he was sitting on a bench towards the back of the Arcade working on a sign. He wanted some small recognition of his trade and we obliged with a picture published with this story.
Old habits die hard and one vendor confided in us that some of the occupants of the Mall still run separate enterprises from the pavement. The advantage of ‘catching’ people as they go by still persists. Pavement vending immediately outside the Mall, however, is a thing of the past. Brisport says he is determined to keep it that way. Vending, however, still takes place opposite the facility and, ironically, the occupants of the Mall, themselves former vendors now look askance on the practice. After all, it gets in the way of their own business.
The ways of the urban vending culture are complex. The practice thrives, some say, because of the tacit encouragement from which it benefits, fueled partly by selective policing and, in the case of a section of Water Street by permission granted some vendors by owners of small areas just outside their own premises.
The occupants of the New Vendors Mall are, however, not allowing that to get them down. Those stallholders towards the back of the facility find their way to the front and diligently encourage curious passers-by to venture in.
How to attract patrons into the Mall is an issue that evokes diligent discussion among the vendors. It is a marketing challenge which City Hall, the private sector and the vendors themselves must confront collectively. They are talking about tiling the paved surface to render the interior more attractive through for people, some of whom have only just ploughed their life’s savings into their respective ventures, the cost may be prohibitive. Other attractions like plants and music are also being contemplated.
On Monday we met too a handful of owners whose stalls are yet to be completed. A serious but cheerful woman sat in front of a partially completed stall bearing a contemplative expression. We approached her hesitantly. She told us about the challenges that she continues to face in seeking to bring her venture to fruition and her lingering fear that she might lose it all. Still, she says, she is determined to persevere.
Trading was slow last Monday morning but the vendors didn’t seem to be worrying too much. Some were discussing the previous Saturday’s opening ceremony, an event which Brisport assured us was a significant one for urban small business. The Food Court was busy. A group of young men were ‘knocking back’ beer at the time of day that some would consider far too early. It seemed to be a carry over from the previous Saturday’s festivities. Outside the Mall, the decorative fence, the clear pavement and the neat row of stalls advertising an assortment of goods for sale lent that particular section of Georgetown a different, transformed appearance.