Evicted vendors face an uncertain future
Temporary outdoor location offered to businesses inside St. Lawrence market
Recently, Andrea Brockie packed her business into boxes.
Brockie, who owns Selsi Sea Rocks, says she was forced to move her operations online after she was evicted from her retail space at St. Lawrence Market, along with several other vendors.
It’s the latest in a long-running saga between the City of Toronto and some of the market’s smaller business operators. In late 2014, the city said it would suspend its 27-year-old market cart program.
The program operates at the south market, and includes 40 vendors — both indoor and outdoor — who sell crafts, jewelry, music, clothing and other items.
Brockie, who had an indoor business, was told to be out of her space by the end of August. The outdoor vendors get more time: they will be allowed to operate until Nov. 30.
Her business, which stocked items such as gourmet salts, bath salts and soaps, had been housed at the St. Lawrence Market for more than 10 years.
“I’m going to take a financial hit right now for sure,” Brockie said. While she’s sold her products online in recent years, that side of the business isn’t as profitable. Last year, her market sales were about $140,000, she said, while her online sales were just $2,000.
The city says the market’s north building across the street is being demolished and rebuilt. The outdoor space at the south market is needed to house displaced vendors.
For now, indoor vendors have been offered temporary table space at the outdoor market until its November closure. While most of Brockie’s fellow vendors took the city up on this offer, she decided not to.
“My store was too big to shrink to a table,” she said, as she had three employees and more than 500 items for sale. She had to lay off her employees and move her stock to a self-storage facility.
Brockie started her business in 2004 at a small outdoor table, selling only about a half-dozen items. It quickly grew, eventually moving to a larger space inside the market.
The city has been tight-lipped about what it’s planning for the nowvacated indoor space; it plans to relaunch the market cart program in the spring of 2016, but won’t say in what shape.
City spokesperson Natasha Hinds Fitzsimmins said the vendors were evicted because they are “revamping the market cart program,” but couldn’t provide more details.
“I don’t know what the program is going to look like,” she said. “Nobody knows what the program is going to look like. We’re still working out those details.”