Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration will soon finalize a contract that may result in devastating rent hikes for vendors on Rockaway Beach's beloved boardwalk, including Rippers, Low Tide Bar, and Caracas.
More than a decade after arriving on the beach, the long-time vendor group Rockaway Beach Club learned late last month the city had rejected their proposal to continue running operations at Beach 87th, Beach 97th, and Beach 106th.
Instead, the NYC Parks Department intends to sign a 15-year lease with the Rockaway Beach Bazaar to manage the three concession stands, an agency spokesperson confirmed. Under the new contract, the city will collect an annual fee of $300,000 in the first year — roughly three times more than what they received from the existing vendors last year.
A spokesperson for the Parks Department said that the new operator would "work with the prior vendors to try to keep as many on site as possible."
In an interview, Riis Bazaar owner Belvy Klein said he hoped to offer subleases to many of the current vendors, including the party-and-burger outpost Rippers and the beloved arepas shack Caracas. "There's already cool vibes, we don't want to fuck with that," Klein said. "Hopefully we can come up with something that works for everyone."
Low Tide Bar this summer
Still, some concession owners were far less sanguine about their prospects for remaining on the beach. Because Klein's bid for the contract was so much higher than what they'd paid, substantial rent hikes seemed inevitable, vendors said.
"The numbers make me a little wary of there being something that makes sense," said Andrew Field, the co-owner of Low Tide Bar and a founding partner of the Rockaway Beach Club. "We have ten years experience. We know what the summers produce."
The boardwalk's sales took a 60 percent hit this summer because of COVID, Field said, and most operated at "mega-losses." Part of the reason they stayed open was to prove to the city that they were dedicated to serving New Yorkers.
"It stings that somebody is going to come in and reap the benefits of all of our hard work," added Field, who also owns the off-boardwalk Tacoway Beach. "I think many of us feel that way [after] the blood, sweat, and tears that we put in."
Klein, who has run the Riis Bazaar along with Aaron Broudo since 2015, said the group plans to make 97th Street concession a year-round destination after next summer. They're planning renovations for all three structures, and to introduce "exciting new operators as we continue to contribute to Rockway's renaissance," according to a release.
But news of the contract decision has also angered some Rockaway locals, who credited the existing vendors with helping to build the community that has transformed the twenty-block stretch of Rockaway into a prime destination in the last decade.
On Friday, several New Yorkers mounted a social media and letter-writing campaign urging the city to reconsider their decision ahead of a final hearing set for Monday. They noted that, unlike Klein and Broudo, all of the Rockaway Beach Club operators live on the peninsula.
In a separate letter to the city sent Friday, Caracas owner Maribel Araujo noted that the concessions had survived both a once-in-a-century pandemic and a hurricane, along with "moments of incomplete boardwalk, sand restorations, blocks of beaches closed due to erosion, no ferry, no proper public education, to name a few."
"We operated year after year with the same integrity and enthusiasm, without hesitation," she wrote. "The diversity created at each concession allowed for beachgoers and locals to make a day of crawling up and down the boardwalk tasting the world in food and entertainment."
UPDATE 1/12: The NYC Comptroller's Office declined to certify the final proposal on Monday, citing outcry from the community.
The story has also been updated to clarify that the Parks Department did not officially state they would award a contact in February.
