NYC-WTC_000230652

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

THE NEW York times, Thursday, October 4,2001

Up the Creek in the Bronx Fulton Fish Market Unhappy in Its New Home By CHARLIE LeDUFF fish from their open-air stalls in southern erating and fish is being sold outdoors. 1 The thing about fish is that it’s got to Manhattan, but rather from a desolate South Street is shut down," said Janel be sold today. This is both a natural and and filthy parking lot in the South Bronx. Patterson, a spokeswoman for the city's an economic law. The market, it seems, created traffic Economic Development Corporation. ' problems. So its relocation went into "We need that street for the relief ef­ This universal truth is being pleaded fort.’’ by fishmongers at the Fulton Fish Mar­ effect Sept. 15 on the order of Mayor The move has 1 brought impending ket, who, because of the World Trade Rudolph W. Giuliani. bankruptcies, layoffs of workers, worries Center attack, are no longer mongering “When the semis and forklifts arc op- of a spoiled seafood supply and struggles for the neighborhood around the South ; Street Seaport, the merchants said. The market is currently at 600 Food Center Drive in the Hunts Point Markel site, the Bronx. It is sandwiched between the meat cooperative and the littered J banks of the Bronx River. It leans like a . shantytown against the old Hebrew Na- ' tional Foods warehouse. The names of ' the fish purveyors are spray-painted on the building. Just across an access road i ,‘Si is a polluted brownfield and a dumping ground for batteries, house paints and ;

rx 1 -W other toxic materials. “H’s a horror Siory," said Joe Cen- trone, a cantankerous cigar-stained , ( salesman for Arrow Seafood, who is known around the market as Joe Tuna. ' 't .k YjTj.i'rfHi .j ■ J'' “VYe’re getting slaughtered. None of the customers can find us up here, and.even , if they could, this ain’t the nicest neigh­ borhood in New York.’’ To make matters worse, the square I footage of the temporary market is one- third the space of the Fulton Fish Mar­ I A refrigerated truck at the Fulton Fish Market, now relocated to Hunts Point in the Bronx. The temporary market has only one-third the space of the old site. ket. The 1,200 forklifts, trucks and vans must jockey for available space 'among the narrow aisles and roads ^hile avoiding the customers and , workmen pushing handcarts. The merchandise is piled so haphazardly that the salesmen find it difficult to remember what fish they have in ; stock. The 59 wholesale operators find themselves working in the elements, without computers or cash registers, with nothing to shield them from the rain and wind. The sleet of Decem- , tier is on everyone's mind. Since the move to the Bronx, mer­ chants estimate that volume is down 40 to 50 percent. The market normal- I ly moves 100,000 boxes of produce a Week, which translates into a Jl bil­ lion annual industry for New York City. But many say that business is how so poor that they don’t think they can last another month in the current situation. ‘ ■ "It’s a temporary home with no end in sight,’’ said Vincent Tatick, president of the Joseph H. Carter

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NYC-WTC_000230652