A city department will take over management of the Maxwell Street Market starting in January 2010, ending the reign of a private contractor widely reviled by the vendors who sell at the market.

Jam Productions Ltd. was assailed by vendors who alleged a range of abusive practices at a raucous meeting in March, from company staffers who displayed an imperious attitude toward sellers to threats that immigration authorities would be called to keep Latino vendors in line.

Jam, which did not return a call seeking comment, was hired when the market was part of the old Department of Consumer Affairs. As part of last year’s budget deal, responsibility for the Maxwell Street Market was shifted to the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, better known for organizing the Taste of Chicago and various neighborhood festivals.

Special Events Executive Director Megan McDonald denied vendor critiques of Jam inspired her department to bring management of Maxwell back in-house.

“It’s really being done as a cost-saving measure. As I’ve said all along, there are two sides to every story,” McDonald said. “This is not about making Jam the bad guy, this is about making the market more efficient.”

Cindy Gatziolis, a spokeswoman for Special Events, said the city would spend $652,000 on the market, including subcontractors for toilets, barricades and other services, down from the $899,000 Jam received this year to run the market and hire subcontractors.

A Chicago icon, the market was renowned for welcoming all stripes, for its cut-rate merchandise and free-wheeling street music scene.

“It was an Old World market transplanted into the ethnic mix of Chicago, engendering new fashions, music and other cultural expressions,” a 2006 report about the market reads.

For decades located around Maxwell Street and Halsted, the market moved to Canal Street, north and south of Roosevelt in 1994 to make way for the University of Illinois-Chicago’s South Campus development. The market moved again, to Desplaines north of Roosevelt, in the fall of 2008.

Before a crowd of hundreds of vendors Monday night, many of them deeply skeptical about the city’s intentions, McDonald said her department would improve the market by promoting it more and providing designated areas for jazz and blues musicians, street performers and picnic tables for food vendors.

While food vendors will be subject to more health and fire code scrutiny, McDonald pledged an “open dialogue” on the small infractions that have resulted in $500 tickets.

Also new next year will be corporate sponsorships. A new space layout for vendors will provide 156 slots that are 14 feet deep and 24 feet long, a size some said was still too small.

The current layout has 132 spaces measuring 10-by-20 feet, 119 slots that are 14 feet deep and only 20 feet long, and 37 spaces 12-by-24 feet, as well 82 spaces at 10-by-10 feet. Space size has been a bone of contention for vendors since the move from Canal Street. Smaller spaces will remain in the new layout.

Whether the changes proposed by Special Events spark the revitalization of the market McDonald and the vendors both say they want remains to be seen.

Many vendors said the market is in a diminished state. Aggressive towing on Sundays, increased licensing fees and a dearth of parking bedevil the market, many said, driving vendors and customers away.

McDonald asked the vendors to give the new plan a chance, saying her staff has spent the last year studying how the market works and what it needs.

“We run some of the largest festivals in the city, and Taste of Chicago is the largest in the county,” she said.

Response to the changes Special Events proposed was mixed but mostly wary.

Vendor Luis Cabrera worried about small-time operators losing their foothold.

“They want big companies and big vendors,” he said. “They want to make this a festival, not a market.”

But Monica Ochoa, who works at the popular Mexican food cart Manolo’s, said the new plan will work “if they do no get pushy with us.”

Barney “Bookman” Agnew said the market has suffered since the city started demanding vendors act “like a business and do everything to the letter of the law.”

“Maxwell Street is different,” he said. “It’s an exception.”

Given all the moves of the market in recent years and the decline seen by dozens of its longtime vendors, there are broader questions too.

“There’s still an underlying deep-seated suspicion by the vendors that the city wants to kill out the Maxwell Street Market,” Agnew said.

Contact: [email protected]

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By Rick Morlien
Posted: 11/30/2009 3:09 PM

I hope it works out so that some of the old time vendors comes back. It doesn't feel the same.