NYC Council bid to let some vendors back on Brooklyn Bridge hits resistance

After New York City ejected vendors who had clogged the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, a Manhattan lawmaker is pushing for a compromise to let some of the vendors back on.

But the lawmaker, Councilwoman Gale Brewer, faced some early resistance Wednesday at a Council hearing, where both Mayor Adams’ administration and a councilman whose Brooklyn district sits under the bridge said the span should stay off-limits to vendors.

The city ordered the vendors off the bridge on Jan. 3, clearing a crush of sellers who had been hawking wares on the cramped pedestrian level of the suspension bridge’s Manhattan end.

Vending on the Brooklyn Bridge increased after bikers were relocated in 2021 from the pedestrian level to a separate bike lane on the side of the bridge. The pedestrian walkway grew dangerously overcrowded, and Adams’ administration has been praised for ending an increasingly chaotic circus of vending.

But some have suggested the move was unfair to licensed vendors who made a living on the bridge.

Brewer, an Upper West Side Democrat who has said the city was right to address the problem, has nonetheless judged the city went too far in sweeping all vendors off the bridge. She has suggested that licensed vendors should still be allowed on the bridge if they are sufficiently spaced out.

She introduced legislation that would allow vendors back on, but would require them to space out by a set amount — perhaps 20 feet. The plan, if authorized, would supersede the mayor’s rule.

Officials with the Police Department and the Transportation Department expressed concerns at Wednesday’s hearing that any return of vending could inhibit public safety.

“The administration opposes this bill as drafted as it would allow vending back on the pedestrian walkways of bridges,” testified Margaret Forgione, the first deputy commissioner of the Transportation Department. “We made this change for public safety, and allowing vendors back would make our city less safe.”

The Brooklyn Bridge is a sensitive target for possible terrorism, and can often be the site of everyday crime, so additional congestion on its walkway — and allowing vendors to leave tarps and other equipment on it overnight — can make the bridge more difficult to protect, said Deputy Inspector Kevin Cain of the Police Department’s Patrol Services Bureau.

Councilman Lincoln Restler, the progressive Democrat who represents DUMBO and Brooklyn Heights, offered an estimate that may spell doom for the push to bring vendors back onto the bridge.

Restler said he has heard from more than 300 constituents who would oppose such a move, and from only one who would support a vendor return on the bridge.

Restler said he recognized that “the City Council has long led in regulating vending,” and that he would support an expansion of vending in a plaza in Brooklyn near the bridge.

“What I would not support is vending on the bridge itself,” Restler said.

After the hearing, Brewer said she appreciates the “need to start over” before any vendors are allowed on the bridge. But she said she expected the dialogue on the bill to go forward.

“Lots of discussion to take place,” Brewer said by phone.