OCC Swap Meet now must abide by the city’s rules
To swap meet or not to swap meet.
That was the question Costa Mesa planning commissioners and Orange
Coast College officials needed to hammer out.
For now, it looks like the college’s weekend swap meet is going to
get another chance at life.
Some may recall that last spring, city officials, responding to
complaints from residents over traffic and crowds, took a closer look
at the college’s 20-year-running flea market operation to see if it
was adhering to the rules.
The result was surprising. It turned out the swap meet had
originally only been approved as a Sunday-only operation but had
expanded to Saturdays as the years went by. In addition, the popular
and successful operation spawned thriving small businesses and
contributed millions of dollars to the college budget coffers.
But who was to blame for expanding the operations?
College officials, to be sure, needed to take the heat for that.
And, in fact, they did, halting the Saturday operations immediately
-- to the detriment of their budget and the merchants who sell their
wares.
City officials, however, weren’t innocent in this snafu. Not only
did they not do a good job of policing the swap meet and making sure
it adhered to the original Sunday-only permit, it was discovered
later that city inspectors had gone out at least two times to inspect
the swap meet operations on Tuesdays.
We probably don’t need to remind anyone, the swap meet isn’t there
on Tuesdays.
Monday’s unanimous vote by planning commissioners to resurrect the
swap meet came after much negotiations and agreements by the college
to prohibit parking in the Coast Community College District parking
lot, require advanced reservations by vendors and undergo a six-month
review.
While the matter could be appealed to the council, we presume and
expect that most of the major kinks have been smoothed out and the
swap meet will get another chance, to the benefit of the college and
the merchants.
In the end, though, we hope these additional measures will also
help the residents, who have to live near the weekend event. If the
six-month review reveals problems for those residents, the city will
need to make some tough decisions and the college will have to live
with it.
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