OLD TATER TOWN FIGHTS FOR ITS LIFE: Code Violations May Force Tater Town, a Longtime Neighborhood Produce Market in Central Broward, Out of Business By Year’s End
By Todd Wright, The Miami Herald
May 22–Chronic arthritis has gnarled the hands of Joan Jesus, the 70-year-old owner of Tater Town Farmer’s Market.
They are scarred, battered and riddled with callouses.
Yet she uses them to pick over baskets of ripe tomatoes and to tenderly hold infants as their parents shop for sweet potatoes, squash and other vegetables.
Jesus soothingly observes that she did the same long ago, when the parents were babies and their own parents shopped at the market.
Much like the 43-year-old Tater Town, one of the few markets in the predominantly black neighborhoods off Broward Boulevard in Central Broward, Jesus’ hands have been through a lot.
But the next generation might not have the chance to enjoy her gentle touch and fresh produce.
Broward County is threatening to shut down the business because of code violations and $122,000 in fines that have accumulated over the past two years.
News of the impending closure has spread to concerned residents, who have started a petition to save one of the pioneer businesses in the area. Tater Town is so popular that the surrounding neighborhood has taken on its name.
Customers affectionately call Jesus — who started the business in 1963 with her husband, William Jesus — Mrs. Tater.
“We are like a big family,” said Jesus, a redhead with a bright smile, who runs the market with her two sons. “They call me Mama . . . I enjoy meeting my customers and helping them out when I can. My customers — that’s my family.”
The neighborhood welcomed the market back, even after it made an unsuccessful move to a nearby larger warehouse on Broward Boulevard about a decade ago.
But the county wasn’t as lenient as it had been. It held the market to a higher standard than it had been operating under.
Many of the violations for which Tater Town was cited have existed since the market opened.
LIST OF VIOLATIONS
In October 2004, the county slapped Jesus with a long list of violations, from failure to enclose trash bins to illegally storing commercial trailers on the property.
The shop stores food in refrigerated outdoor trailers, and has an entrance on Northwest 27th Avenue, neither of which complies with county rules.
Several of the citations concern the cramped parking and the eroded pavement that once served as the parking lot. On holidays and weekends, cars are forced to park at the warehouses across 27th Avenue and at the cemetery next to the market.
The county gave Jesus and her sons, Richard and Randy, 90 days to correct the problems. The three months turned into more than a year, and while some of the violations have been cleared, many still exist, said Hipolito Cruz Jr., the county’s manager of code enforcement.
The county has no choice but to move forward with efforts to foreclose on the property, he said. But, he said, his office will continue to work with the owners.
“They can stop this process at any time. All they have to do is come in compliance with what the code says,” Cruz said. “Our goal is to gain full compliance, not take people’s businesses.”
Jesus admits the situation looks bleak. Without the trailers, she would have no place to store fruits and vegetables after hours. The business can’t afford to pay the hefty fines.
With county plans to redevelop the corridor, Jesus fears the produce market doesn’t fit in. The Tater Town block is identified as one of the major blights in the county’s community redevelopment study.
While the future of the market may be up in the air, Tater Town has stayed true to the area’s rural past. Not much has changed at the store since 1963. William and Joan Jesus came from a small town near Macon, Ga., with a truck full of pumpkins — not potatoes. Sweet potatoes weren’t added until a year later.
TWO-LANE ROAD
The family set up shop off 27th Avenue, at the time a two-lane road, in a predominantly white community called Boulevard Gardens, with a handful of homes.
The Jesuses sold potatoes out of wooden crates under umbrellas, similar to the set-up at the market today. They remembered customers’ names and favorite produce.
If a customer didn’t have the money to pay, Jesus would give them the produce anyway — a practice she continues today with some customers.
“I just feel you got to do right by people. They are doing right by us for coming and shopping with us all these years,” she said.
As the years went by, the population shifted and the neighborhood changed. Development began to boom in West Broward.
Whites moved to communities like Plantation.
Black families moved into communities around Tater Town, the only grocer in the area.
Today, the market offers dozens of different fruits and vegetables and sells fresh sausages, neck bones, turkey wings and other meat from a refrigerated trailer.
Bessie Jackson, 80, was one of the first shoppers to take advantage of the fresh Georgia produce. A Georgia native herself, she still travels to Tater Town to pick up groceries. So does her daughter, Cassandra, 52, and her three daughters, who are all in their 20s.
“We don’t go anywhere else,” said Cassandra Jackson, who lives a few miles away from the market. “People have always been nice there, even when I was a little girl. It would be a loss for a lot of people because generations have grown up on food from Tater Town. That place is all about family.”
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