CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The Corpus Christi Trade Center reopens with cheerful business owners ready to serve. The Trade Center is best known as the only place in town where you can get a haircut, furniture, and cucumber cup all in the same place.
Business owners inside the facility are ecstatic to see customers coming back after a difficult two weeks with the facility being closed.
For most vendors, this is their full time job.
Muhammed Zubair is the owner of Sultan Furniture. He's been at the trade center for 20 years.
He told 3NEWS, "This is our second home." Zubair adds, "Corpus is a small town, but we are like a family. I'm so happy. Even my employees are happy, customers are happy to see us too."
You'll find all sorts of things from novelty to traditional.
Roni Baysinger is the owner of Avon Plus. She's been located in the trade center for 30 years and is very excited to see this kind of foot traffic again. Baysinger stated, "Oh it's been wonderful having our crowd back to see us and a lot of people pleased to see us back open. For us, it's been nice."
For the past two weeks, while the facility was closed, the owners especially faced difficult hardship. "It was difficult. Being closed for something that's beyond our control, not being able to make any money for those two weeks. It's hard, we rely on this." Baysinger added.
For some, this is a side hustle, but for others this is their meat and potatoes.
Marissa Guerra tells us, "We have a lot of people every weekend, who like to come in get some good food and I'm sure they've been missing the food waiting for the trade center to be open again, so we're very excited to be back."
Seeing familiar faces makes all the difference for the local venders.
Armando Salinas III is the owner of Trinity Comics & Collectibles. He spoke with 3NEWS and stated, "Oh it's amazing to see everybody, seeing all my friends out here, some people from around the corner of here."
After the trade center closed for two weeks, Salinas started hearing rumors of the facility opening back up. "You start hearing word of mouth you start hearing rumors you start hearing a bunch of things."
He has worked with his family to make sure everything in his shop was in tip-top shape for the crowds today.
"Everything is stocked up and ready to go. So far we've had a good day so I'm looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings us."
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