NEWS & OPINION FEATURE
END OF AN ERA
Skaters and vendors pushed out of Eastland begin looking for a new home BY RYAN PITKIN
PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN
Pg. 4 - FEB 23 - MAR 8 2022
THE SPOT WHERE CENTRAL FLEA MARKET ORIGINALLY STOOD HAS BEEN BARRICADED.
When local mother and entrepreneur Maria, whose name has been changed by her request to preserve her family’s privacy, walked into her first Charlotte City Council meeting on Feb. 14, she hoped to get some answers. What she saw was more of the same. Maria had been outside with some of her colleagues, fellow vendors at a flea market on the former Eastland Mall property that had been shut down by the city on the previous Friday, when they were invited inside to watch the meeting. While she can read English, Maria does not understand it well when spoken. Her experience in the meeting was one of frustration. “The city invited us in to show us their projects, and we were in there for like two hours looking at them, and listening to them show us their projects,” she recently told Queen City Nerve through a translator. “So they saw some people outside protesting, they invited us inside to see their projects, but at no point did they show us anything that included us in their projects … They let us come inside so that we could see what projects the city has, but nothing for us, they didn’t listen to us.” The council was following a set agenda at the meeting, with no reason to address the situation at the former Eastland Mall site, but Maria’s
experience was indicative of a much longerstanding issue that has now come to a head. The closure of the market and the displacement of around 200 local vendors who set up there every weekend, along with the upcoming demolition of the hugely popular Eastland DIY skatepark, will pave the way for a $26-million multi-use redevelopment of the Eastland property led by Tepper Sports and Entertainment and Crosland Southeast. While development of the Eastland property has been a many years in the making, and welcomed by many throughout the city, the process has raised questions around whom the city is willing to partner with and whom they’d rather ignore. Jorge Castaneda is another local vendor who, like Maria, was one of a handful of local entrepreneurs who originally launched the Central Flea Market at the Eastland site in 2015. Known for selling exotic fruits, flea markets are Castaneda’s main source of income. While he knew the market would eventually close, he and his fellow vendors are frustrated with the lack of communication they’ve received from the city throughout the process. For months vendors have requested meetings with city officials
PHOTO BY RYAN ALLEN
SKATERS HAVE BEEN GETTING IN SESSIONS AT EASTLAND DIY WHILE THEY STILL CAN.
to discuss how they can move forward by selling their wares elsewhere, but to no avail. In January, they hired Ismaail Qayim of Queen City Community Law Firm to help them organize and better communicate with the city. His own requests for a meeting also went unanswered. Vendors also say they’re being misrepresented in the media based on the city’s narrative alleging that illicit activity and improper permitting at the site justifies the displacement. “They wanted to find an excuse, an excuse to say, ‘Oh, that’s their fault. They’re not doing it right,’” Castaneda said. “We tried to do it right, they just don’t want to listen to us. They just keep giving excuse after excuse and nothing is done. We tried to work with the city of Charlotte, we tried to bring more revenue to the city, but we want to do it right. We want to do it right and we want to be heard.”
‘This is culture’
Around the same time officials were informing vendors at the Central Flea Market they would not be allowed to set up on the property anymore, the city was also finalizing plans to shut down the Eastland DIY skatepark. Beginning around the same time that the flea market opened, skateboarders slowly built up the
concrete park over seven years, creating an iconic space in a city with limited room for skaters. On Feb. 15, the city announced they only had two weeks to enjoy the fruits of their labor; the skatepark will be shut down on March 3. When Queen City Nerve visited the site a few days after the announcement, about 75 people were there. Longtime skater Chris Gulley said he had been coming to the park for years and helped with some of the builds. It became all the more special to him in recent years when his kids became old enough to skate there. “We brought the funds and the materials and concrete and everything we needed together and did it as a team, which is the cool thing about skateboarding in general; it is a community. Everybody here doesn’t know each other when they come here but as you kind of get together and build this park together you build a bond with these people and that’s what we’ve had for the past seven years and now it’s going to get torn down for whatever the city has planned,” Gulley said. “It’s a staple in the skateboarding community, so to have it torn down is a big blow for everybody.” Standing along the edge of the park upon our visit was Stephen Barrett, who helped found the Eastland DIY skatepark on the foundation of
