As a food delivery worker in New York City, Gustavo Ajche realized during the pandemic that there were few spaces for workers like him to rest between delivering orders. The Fulton Street subway station or the open lobby at 60 Wall Street have long been gathering spots for deliveristas like him who work in the lower Manhattan and Brooklyn area.

“We’ve always thought that it would be great if we could have a space where we could rest or get a coffee when we are working,” Ajche, an immigrant from Guatemala and a cofounder of Los Deliverista Unidos, a delivery workers group said.

A little over five years later, that idea turned into a reality when the country’s first deliverista hub for delivery workers was opened near City Hall in New York on April 7.

The hub on Broadway near Murray Street was first announced by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who pledged to use funds from a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to build rest stops for delivery workers in October 2021.

After Schumer secured $1 million in federal funds, delivery workers and their advocates had hoped to move quickly to build the hub on Parks Department land. The project made little progress under the Eric Adams administration, and the Manhattan Community Board 1, a local advisory body that represents the neighborhood around City Hall, rejected the plan in 2024. The board said it felt like the hub’s modern design was out of step with the historic area and worried that it would draw crowds. They, however, could not legally stop the project and in January, the Mamdani administration made completing the hub a priority.

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At the ribbon cutting last week, Schumer addressed the delays. “For years, my office pushed and prodded the previous administration, overcoming bureaucratic hurdles, overcoming inertia,” he said. “I want to congratulate the new administration. They have moved quickly to expedite the process.”

On opening day, the deliverista hub, which consists of two rooms and no furniture, was still not fully operational—Con Edison had been unable to locate the electrical connection and said it would have to return. There will also be no bathroom, because of a lack of water hookups.

But workers and advocates were excited that the space they had been organizing for was now a reality. “We live in a system where the entire city has been designed for the wealthy, for the cars. Why not for working people?” asked Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Workers Justice Project.

Guallpa said the hub will also serve as a space to organize more workers. In one of the rooms, Workers Justice Project staff will be on hand to help delivery workers challenge app deactivations and recover stolen wages and tips.

The hub will be open Monday through Friday from 11 am to 5 pm. Workers can also fix flats, charge their e-bikes on two exterior charging cabinets, and charge their phones at the hub. E-bikers can drop off the battery and check the progress via a mobile app, which will alert them when the battery is ready to be picked up. “We can come here before or after the lunch rush or before the dinner orders start coming in,” said Ajche.

The charging and rest hubs were one of the key aims of Los Deliveristas Unidos, which was formed in the pandemic in 2020 by Ajche and Guallpa. The city’s 80,000 delivery workers, 90 percent of them immigrants, complete 2.64 million deliveries every week, and they now hope to open similar hubs in the Upper West Side and in the Bronx under an administration receptive of their ideas.

The hub opening is the latest in a series of actions by the Mamdani administration against gig companies—since January, the city has sued a delivery app for wage theft and secured a $5.2 million settlement from Uber Eats, HungryPanda, and Fantuan for shortchanging nearly 50,000 workers.

“The streets are our workplaces, and we must fight so that dignity exists here,” Ajche said “We celebrate today, but the work is not finished. Our work ends when every worker in this city has full rights, safety, fair pay and dignity.”