COSTA MESA : Tel-Phil Again Wins Swap Meet Lease
The Orange County Fair Board has unanimously agreed to award a five-year lease to Tel-Phil Enterprises to run the Orange County Marketplace swap meet.
Tel-Phil, which has operated the swap meet for 22 years, beat out seven other bidders for the lucrative lease. The decision Thursday ends months of speculation over the direction of the swap meet, which some vendors feared would be phased out in favor of other ventures proposed for the fairgrounds.
“We’re happy that it’s over,” said Serge Kohan, president of the Orange County Marketplace Merchants Assn. Kohan has spoken in favor of Tel-Phil, but said after the meeting that vendors really did not have a clear preference.
“We’ve found that the sellers’ bottom line was it doesn’t matter,” he said. “We have obvious factions that prefer Tel-Phil and obvious other factions that prefer someone else. We have no problem working with anybody or working with Tel-Phil.”
A selection committee of the board made its recommendation after scoring the bidders on their experience running swap meets, financial stability and their proposals for running the Orange County Marketplace.
The lease will give the 32nd Agricultural District, which runs the fairgrounds, 51% of gross revenue from food and beverage sales, including beer and wine, and 38.4% of revenue from renting sellers space.
Tel-Phil attorney Thomas Malcolm said vendors and customers will notice little change in the operation of the swap meet, except for an increase in admission from 50 cents to $1 when the new lease takes effect April 16. The change was forced, he said, by the higher revenue going to the district.
The rental cost to vendors will also increase because of the district’s revenue demands, he said, but the specific increase remains to be worked out.
“The quality of the operation will remain the same,” Malcolm said after the decision. “We think that this is sort of Darwinian, that some of the weak sellers will not be able to remain. That may in the long run improve the quality of vendors.”
From the vendors’ point of view, the lease stands to improve relations with the operator because it contains a provision for vendors to air their grievances. But whether the operator responds to the complaints remains to be seen, Kohan said.
His group has made a formal request to review Tel-Phil’s plans for that procedure, so it may file a protest if it disagrees with the way complaints will be handled. Kohan also said he will propose that the merchants’ association select a liaison to work with the operator and the vendors.
