Frustration in the City Market leads to abuse

Jim Antosca points one morning at a row of well-worn vans and trucks across from his stall in the City Market.

"That one's a vendor, that one, that one, that one. They're all vendors," he says.

Most of the vehicles had handicapped parking placards hanging from their mirrors, allowing their owners to park in metered spots for free. Antosca has one, too, mentioning that he has a problem with his sciatic nerve.

He says that many vendors aren't really disabled, and that the widespread misuse of handicap placards is partly a reflection of frustration over parking around the busy Market Area.

Vendors have no easy way to load and unload their wares in the mornings, he says.

So some try to beat the system by misusing disabled placards.

Antosca said not only is the city losing revenue from parking meters, but tourists and other visitors - potential customers - are crowded out of these prime parking places.

Another problem: Many of the vendors' vans and trucks that line the Market Area are just plain ugly, he added. (His dented car also has seen better times.)

This doesn't present the best image to visitors, he said. "The system doesn't make sense."

He said he's written city officials several times, suggesting that they set up loading zones next to the Market stalls.

Vendors could be given special decals and assigned special times to load and unload their goods in the mornings, and then could move their cars to protected lots nearby.

"This would create metered parking for tourists and locals who are presently denied access to the area because vendors illegally monopolize most of the available metered parking on North Market and South Market all day," he wrote in a letter last year to the Charleston Police Department.

The city recently chose a new manager of the low-rise brick sheds, and city officials and the manager may take a look at the vendor parking issue as they create a new master plan for the area, said Barbara Vaughn, the city's communications director.