Imelda Navarrete, 54, runs her booth Friday at the Broadacres Open Air Marketplace in North Las Vegas. The market’s owners want to make $2 million in improvements, including adding an amphitheater and restrooms, but city code would require changes that would force 350 vendors, including Navarrete, to lose their cherished booths.
Thursday, July 17, 2008 | 2 a.m.
Delfino Lopez readies a booth at the swap meet Friday. In peak season, reserved spaces at the market on Las Vegas Boulevard North go for $500 a month.
Imelda Navarrete may have the perfect business at the biggest swap meet around. For 17 years, she’s been selling supplies to many of the 1,100 vendors at the Broadacres Open Air Marketplace in North Las Vegas.
The better they do, the better she does.
“Whatever they need,” Navarrete says. “Rope or bungee cords or shopping bags.”
Navarrete, 54, works seven days a week. When she’s not at the swap meet she’s maintaining slot machines at a local casino.
Now she’s at risk of losing her prime location at the swap meet, along the back wall.
The owners of the Broadacres Swap Meet want to add an amphitheater and restrooms to the 31-year-old facilities.
But to make those improvements, they would have to bring the property up to code. That would mean creating a 30-foot setback on the front and back, displacing 350 vendors.
At best, they would be able to find other, less prominent spaces. At worst, they would be put out of business.
There currently is no setback along Las Vegas Boulevard North, where a fence runs along a sidewalk, and along the back wall, which abuts homes in a residential neighborhood.
Navarrete is among those whose spaces would be moved or lost. And she likes her space. It’s on the main drag and everyone knows where to find her.
“This is me,” she says. “I’m a people person. I hope they will not take it away from me.”
Broadacres bills itself as the fifth-largest swap meet in the country. More than 20,000 people visit each weekend — enough bodies to fill the Mandalay Bay Events Center twice. In some eyes, the meet is a bigger deal than the Galleria, the Fashion Show Mall or any of the outlets dotting the valley.
Greg Danz, who lives in Summerlin, purchased the 37-acre swap meet two years ago. His family runs three swap meets in California.
As he drives a golf cart around the market, he says he wants to make $2 million in improvements to the property, including tearing down some boarded-up apartments to add five acres for parking.
A new, 700-seat amphitheater would showcase local entertainment and be a place to watch soccer games on big-screen TVs during the busy weekends. A 6,000-square-foot building would house bathrooms and permanent food vendors.
“Our point of view is if they don’t let us have this (setback variance), we won’t do anything to this place,” says Danz, 33, a former investment trader who quit his job to join the family business. “We won’t make any improvements. I’m not going to put these vendors on the street.”
More than 100 swap meet supporters showed up at a Redevelopment Agency meeting this month to express concerns about losing part of the market. The five City Council members, who sit as the Redevelopment Agency, put off the decision on the setback variance until Aug. 6.
The Planning Commission is steadfast in favor of the setbacks.
“Those people at City Hall sit in suits in the air conditioning,” says George Moen, who for 20 years, sitting in the shade of his own cowboy hat, has been selling new and used hand tools at the meet. “Let’s see them come out here and sell for eight hours.”
Councilman William Robinson, a retiree from the Clark County School District, is the most vocal supporter of the swap meet on the City Council.
“I think the new ownership is trying to embellish on what was nothing but a swap meet,” he says. “They are trying to bring some entertainment for the patrons who frequent the place. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it. Why not? It’s not a hill to die for.”
Councilman Robert Elliason, who works in the construction industry and is chairman of the Redevelopment Agency board, says he hasn’t made a decision.
Elliason’s father used to go to the swap meet every weekend. “He loved that place,” says Elliason, whose ward encompasses the swap meet. “He went every Saturday. He’d come home with a screwdriver or two.”
Broadacres has more than screwdrivers. There are shoes, clothes, rugs, toys, flags and just about everything in between.
Among those at risk of losing their prized swap meet real estate are Ruben Ramirez, 58, who for the past 12 years has been driving from San Diego each weekend to sell Catholic religious articles, and Yoni Saul, whose family runs nine spaces at the swap meet.
They won’t say how much they’re making but worry that if they lose their prized locations, they’d face financial hardships.
In peak season, the reserved spaces go for $500 a month.
Next month the council is likely to make a decision about the setbacks. Either way the swap meet will continue. It’s just a matter of how it will look.
“I think we have a decent shot,” Danz says. “It’s hard to vote no on something when there’s thousands of people in our favor and nobody against us.”
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