Las Palmas Swap Meet reopens in Calexico

CALEXICO, Calif. (KYMA, KECY) - Hundreds of vendors are back in business now that the local swap meet has reopened.

One of the busiest commercial areas in Calexico is booming with people again.

The reopening of Las Palmas Swap Meet brought foot traffic that hadn't been seen in town since the coronavirus shutdown.

“We have a lot of vendors from LA, Sacramento, a couple from Las Vegas. Currently, we have about 100. Normally at normal capacity, we have 500-600. 100 of those vendors were registered in January so they were able to get their licenses prorated by the city since they lost about 7 months of business. This morning we registered about another 60," said Chris Martinez, Las Palmas operations manager.

We spoke to a local vendor who says she’s grateful to be back in business.

“Really nervous, I’m not gonna lie. We were really nervous. It’s been a long time that we’ve been off. Everybody’s been wanting to get up and get on their feet again instead of being locked down, but we’ve been really good thanks to everybody who gave us the chance to reopen. We’re putting up our signs, we're keeping all the precautions and making sure everyone follows the rules. We want to stay open," said Crystal Rebollar, vendor.

“75% of our customers come from Mexicali. So normally on a Wednesday by this time already we would have four to five thousand people. Currently, we’re not at that capacity since our border is still closed, but we still get a lot of local people," said Martinez.

Tune in to 13 On Your Side at 4:00 p.m. as we speak to vendors about how the reopening will help them, and the community.