Councilman Elo-Rivera calls out Amazon for using San Diego public parks as delivery hub

RYAN MURRAY, City News Service
Posted

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - San Diego City Councilman Sean Elo-Rivera joined with labor leaders Wednesday to demand Amazon stop using public San Diego parks and roads as part of its distribution network.

Elo-Rivera said he contacted the city attorney after learning of delivery activity at Crown Point Park to "determine what authority the city has to stop the practice, what enforcement tools are available, and whether existing laws need to be strengthened," according to a statement from the councilman.

"Amazon does not get to turn San Diego's public parks and public right-of-way into its private distribution network," Elo-Rivera said. "Our parks exist because generations of San Diegans decided that there is certain land in this city that should belong to all of us. It should be where kids play and families gather, not free warehouse space for Amazon."

In a viral video posted by former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, Amazon workers at Crown Point Park were staged in the parking lot unloading packages from a Ryder truck and loading them into the ubiquitous gray and blue delivery vans.

"Um. San Diego... why are you allowing Amazon to set up a de facto mobile distribution center at Crown Point Shores, a public park? These workers are also historically misclassified & underpaid. Now on public property? How is this being allowed?" Gonzalez posted as a caption to the video on Instagram, tagging Elo-Rivera, Mayor Todd Gloria and Amazon's Teamsters.

The speakers on Wednesday, including Todd Walters, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135, and Chris Walker, cofounder of the Winyl Club, said it was unfair a corporation could use public land for its business when yoga groups have to get city approval and families seeking to claim a picnic table must acquire a permit from the city.

"Every small business in this city pays rent, pays property tax, pulls permits, hires our neighbors," Elo-Rivera said. "They've spent years trying to compete with Amazon on an already uneven playing field, and then Amazon takes public land to rig the game even more."

For Amazon's part, a spokesman told SanDiegoVille it was an honest mistake.

"Due to a miscommunication, Crown Point Shores was used as a package transfer site," company representative Austin Stowe told the news site. "We've since corrected this error and added safeguards to ensure it doesn't happen again."

Elo-Rivera rejected that framing.

"Nobody accidentally runs a distribution operation out of a park," he said. "Amazon made a calculation that nobody would notice, and if somebody did, nobody would do anything about it. Then they got caught and called it an accident."

The councilman called for a citywide response to prevent it from happening again. The labor leaders said Amazon using public property instead of its own distribution centers and warehouses was patently unfair.

"Amazon has more than enough resources to pay for the facilities and infrastructure it needs to operate in San Diego," Walters said. "What it should not be doing is using public property to subsidize its private operations while its workers are left without the wages, benefits, and protections of a union contract.

"If Amazon wants to operate here, it should follow the same rules as everyone else, pay its fair share, and respect the workers and communities that make its business possible."

Walker, whose Winyl Club organizes events featuring music in public spaces, said local organizers have to jump through hoops to use public space.

"There shouldn't be more barriers for the people trying to give back to the community than there are for corporations using our public spaces for business," he said.

Elo-Rivera asked San Diegans to help identify similar activity elsewhere in the city. Residents who see delivery trucks staging in parks or delivery hubs operating from public property can report it to Council District 9 at 619-236-6699.

"This isn't really about just one parking lot," he said. "It's about how the most powerful corporations in the world see places like ours -- as theirs for the taking, not neighborhoods where people live, not parks where kids learn to ride a bike.

"Amazon can do business in San Diego, but doing business here means respecting our workers, our neighborhoods, our laws, and our public spaces. Our parks, our bays, our streets belong to San Diegans, and we're not going to stand by while billionaires help themselves. Parks are for people, not profit. Amazon needs to get the hell out of our parks."