How Bridge-Building Transformed a South Philly Immigrant Market

Early on Sundays at South Philadelphia’s FDR Park, the soccer teams begin to arrive with coolers, kids, and families in tow. Flanking the edge of the fields, the vendors open their tents. By midmorning, their grills are sizzling — selling tacos, pupusas, fresh cut fruit, agua fresca, memories of home.

What began as an informal extension of the weekend soccer league has grown into a distinct hub: the Latino Market, a place of food, family, and old-fashioned enterprise. At 12 vendors, the market’s size is relatively modest, but its presence signals a quiet reworking of the relationship between immigrant communities and public space in one of Philadelphia’s most dynamic parks.

Urban design has undergone major shifts, from the top-down directives of Robert Moses to the grassroots activism of Jane Jacobs. But success in formalizing the Latino Market points to an emergent model of inclusive civic planning, where a civic intermediary works alongside the community rather than directing or deferring to it entirely. At its core, the market’s evolution is a story about people — about relationships built across language, systems, and lived experience.

“I never imagined the Latino Market would ever be recognized,” said Eladio Soto, one of the founding vendors at the Latino Market, in a 2024 documentary on the market. Originally from Puebla, Mexico, he has built deep roots in Philadelphia’s food scene. Beyond his role at FDR, he owns El Mezcal Cantina, a popular restaurant in the Point Breeze neighborhood. He says, “But thanks be to God, with the help of the park director, with the help of Alvaro, we are being recognized.”

Community organizer Alvaro Drake-Cortés, a Colombian immigrant, former U.S. military liaison and South Philly educator, became the de facto translator between the vendors operating a market that was technically illegal and the city’s under-resourced Parks & Rec system.

By connecting community knowledge with institutional support, Drake-Cortés was able to recognize and uplift one of the informal economies redefining what South Philadelphia looks and feels like.

Latino growth reshaping the city

The Latino Market’s origin story begins with soccer and hustle.

The market’s development is closely tied to the immigrant soccer league, Liga Pattison, which transformed two waterlogged fields into a bustling hub for weekend matches. In a short film about the market, Eladio Soto, one of the founding vendors, comments on its unexpected beginnings: “The league started in 2000. The teams that came here were hungry. And that’s where all the ideas began.”

What started informally — vendors selling out of the backs of cars or under pop-up tents — slowly grew into a regular weekend ritual.

Now a rotating mix of nearly 50 immigrant soccer teams use the fields. Every Sunday from spring through mid-fall, Liga Pattison plays, and the market operates from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The outdoor atmosphere is festive and bustling, as visitors gather to cheer on the games, sample various foods and peruse the vendor stalls.

Philadelphia’s Latino population is the city’s fastest-growing demographic. Recent census data indicates that from 2000 to 2022, it has nearly doubled — from 130,000 to more than 252,000. Immigrants from countries including the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia account for a considerable share of this growth.

Their presence has revitalized commercial corridors, where Latino-owned businesses have transformed once-declining blocks, and helped strengthen the city’s civic and cultural fabric.

In South Philly, this off-the-radar story is lived and felt in ways that run counter to the national storyline. The hyperlocal reality unfolds in contrast to a narrative that too often miscasts immigrant communities as “perpetual foreigners and law-breakers,” flattening a much richer story of resilience, investment, and belonging.

The disconnect is striking: While the national debate churns, FDR’s Latino Market shows how a different kind of city can take shape when a public space becomes a platform for partnership.

Charting a course, inspired by another immigrant market

By 2020, the market was buzzing with energy but still lacked structure. Vendors were unlicensed. Cars parked on the grass. There was no official layout.

That’s when Drake-Cortés, an FDR Park board member who was working with a local immigrant and refugee support nonprofit called The Welcoming Center, stepped in. To establish relationships with vendors and the soccer community, he began engaging with them on the ground.

“The first few weeks, it was just basically me introducing myself to any and every single person that was there on site — whether it be a player, a vendor, a kid, just anybody — and say, ‘Hi, how are you?’” he says

Connecting over food, family and childhood experiences was helped by having one foot in the Latino world. “I speak the language, know the culture, know the music,” he says. Meanwhile, his other foot is in “this American life and world, where I know how systems work and how our government works and how policies are implemented.” Effectively, he says, “I basically was serving as a bridge.”

The Latino Market also aimed to build on the success of FDR Park’s Southeast Asian Market, which by 2024 included 76 vendors and had become a nationally recognized destination. The Southeast Asian Market demonstrated how community-driven markets could maintain cultural authenticity while working within more formal civic structures.

For Drake-Cortés and others involved in the Latino Market, a central goal was to support the transition of informal vendors — who remained technically unlicensed — into legitimate participants in the park’s future. Both markets reflect the role of local residents in shaping FDR Park as a civic space, deeply informed by immigrant and refugee experiences.

Though different in scale and context, Drake-Cortés saw in the Southeast Asian Market specific practices worth emulating — especially its deliberate stewardship commitments and sustained partnerships with the park’s Friend’s group, the Conservancy, city agencies, and community organizations that helped make it part of the park’s evolving identity. He also took note how signature events, like the Flower Show at FDR, had elevated the Southeast Asian Market’s visibility while preserving its character.

These observations shaped his playbook: prioritize relationships and build trust between vendors and the systems they had long navigated as part of the city’s informal economy. Based on what he learned from the Southeast Asian Market’s success navigating city and park regulations at FDR Park, he drafted a plan for the Latino Market and presented the Business Incubator Market Proposal to the park’s first director Justin Diberardinis.

The plan’s vision aimed to align with broader transformations underway at FDR Park, where a $250 million master plan was beginning to reshape the landscape. Drake-Cortés’s proposal wasn’t just about logistics; it was about helping vendors see their work as small businesses, not just weekend side jobs.

“Cortés was really good at bringing structure and system to the Latino Market,” says Roxana Taginya, who followed Drake-Cortés as a liaison for both the Latino and Southeast Asian Markets at FDR until 2024.

Among the questions he posed: How can FDR support and empower the immigrant communities that have created food markets here? And what steps could vendors take to become vested partners in the park’s future

“To start, I proposed that we have dedicated spaces where folks could establish their kiosks,” Drake-Cortés explains. Before this, vendors set up their tents in different places each time.

The original proposal (pictured above) was more expansive, including 10-15 food vendors and 5-10 craft vendors in the surrounding fields. In the end, it was agreed that there would be 12 vendor spots total.

After park officials accepted the proposal with some modifications in 2020, Drake-Cortés went to work. First, he requested basic resources to help manage the space, including fencing material and signage. He needed to secure the space physically, create boundaries. The soccer fields, which were never in great shape and often wet, were also getting torn up from people parking their cars there during games.

An old FedEx Van turns into a community center

As part of his broader effort to support vendors on site, he converted a used FedEx delivery van into a modified camper van. “I outfitted it like a mini office,” he says. “I took it to the park, and it became my central community command center. I would often meet with individual vendors in the van.”

On Sundays, the doors to the van were always open. But it served other purposes too. Drake-Cortés often parked it strategically between the lot and the fields — one of several placemaking barriers he created to prevent cars from pulling onto the soccer fields.

Drake-Cortés is proud of the speaker system he installed in the van. He parked the van and would greet people and make occasional announcements. “It was like, ‘Buenos días, everyone. How are you doing? Great to see you all,’” he recalls. “Or ‘I hope you all are enjoying today’s festivities.’” Of course it was in Spanish. Drake-Cortés says people enjoyed the gesture. It helped set the tone and put people in a good mood.

In its first year, many of the market’s immediate needs — like trash disposal, portable toilets, and basic infrastructure — were met, though one significant red flag surfaced.

When Drake-Cortés first became involved, park staffer Taginya says, it came to light that one of the soccer league’s organizers had been charging both the soccer teams and the venders to use the park space. Taginya says that Drake-Cortés and the park director were immediately clear: “No one’s paying each other to vend. That’s when the vendors started organizing with Cortez [more actively].”

Drake-Cortés says he explained to the man, both one-on-one and in front of others, that there were no fees to be charged or collected from anyone coming to vend at the park. “That was made clear,” he says. “Everyone was grateful for that. But I’m not judgmental…he’s very much a businessman; it’s good that he’s [been] bringing the soccer to the community.”

Shortly after, at the end of each Sunday, vendors agreed to start helping to clean up after breaking down their tents. Before he got involved, the area was often “full of trash, broken glass, and things like that,” Drake-Cortés recalls. “But our area was left cleaner than any other part of the park. Our vendors could hold their heads up high. I would take pictures every time.”

Keeping the area in order benefited everybody. No one needed to prove anything; this was the Latino Market catering to a majority of Hispanic Philadelphians. But for Drake-Cortés, these were solvable problems.

Other areas required a shift in thinking. The soccer league and vendors were growing, and the park was being redeveloped under a working master plan, raising the stakes.

“Picture 12 vendors selling their products,” Drake-Cortés says. “They were not really concerned about what any of the others were doing or working together. They were just there: They sell, they leave. Outside of their customers, they also were not necessarily concerned about the other needs of people using the park.”

Drake-Cortés was working on several fronts. He was committed to supporting and advocating for the Latino community’s vendors, but he also had to balance those efforts with the park’s overall needs and the diverse users who relied on it.

“My job was about changing how the space was being used physically and informing everyone of this big change that was going to take place,” he says. “I started to align them in working toward that goal.”

Drake-Cortés broke down the master plan and what it might mean for the vendors as changes were coming to the park. He told them candidly there was a strong possibility that the new space may or may not be accessible to the vendors, specifically because the city envisioned licensed vendors using that space.

He was clear-eyed about the changes the vendors needed to make, but also empathetic: “I have to get the people who are not interested or motivated to see what is in it for them…It’s like building skills, right? But in this case, it was building buy-in and participation.”

In words and practice, Drake-Cortés made clear that when language is a barrier, clear communication isn’t an extra: it’s the job.

Organizing for opportunity

By the end of the first season, small steps started to add up. The vendor space was clearly established, parking on the fields had stopped, and the vendors were starting to identify as a group.

In the second year, Drake-Cortés partnered with the Welcoming Center to launch vendor training, helping participants formalize their businesses and earn necessary certifications, including ServSafe food safety training for proper food storage and handling.

At the end of each Sunday, the vendors also started to meet to check in — sorting out challenges, sharing advice and shaping the space together. In these conversations, the market was discussed not only in terms of immediate concerns, but as a shared project by the people committed to making it work.

Drake-Cortés facilitated the meetings, encouraging input, open discussion, and collective decision-making. These discussions led to basic norms, such as setting up before 8 a.m. and keeping vehicles off the grounds afterward — latecomers had to unload from the road. They also discussed the benefits of creating and posting menus with prices; that made sense, and they agreed to do that.

Later in the season, when he requested that the vendors acquire 10x10 tents to give the market a more unified look, that was a harder sell. It meant spending money, that change would take longer. But eventually, they came around; eventually, they would do that.

As the vendors became more organized, they also became more vocal. They expressed a strong desire to extend the market hours. Initially, they sold from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., but they wanted more time. Drake-Cortés represented their interests to the park director, who then brought the request to Parks & Rec. Together, they successfully negotiated a new closing time of 6 p.m. This give-and-take approach fostered a sense of collaboration and mutual respect.

Drake-Cortés’s plan for the Latino Market unfolded in stages, giving vendors time to adapt, make improvements, and grow their small businesses within the park. The step-by-step approach also allowed the city and FDR Park to track the market’s evolution and recognize its potential — while seeking to balance competing interests.

In response, Parks & Rec began building capacity to support the vendors’ goals. Meetings with the Commerce Department and other city agencies were initiated, and follow-up coordination and administrative support came through the Welcoming Center.

A civic intermediary

While it’s tempting to describe Drake-Cortés as a citizen planner, his approach points to a different figure within the ecosystem of urban change — not a top-down official or a bottom-up activist, but a civic intermediary.

Civic intermediaries are bridge-builders who often operate behind the scenes, moving between worlds — part translator, part negotiator, part strategist. There is no one-size-fits-all model for this role, and each is driven by their own motivations, whether pragmatic, personal or civic-minded.

Drake-Cortés’s work was not about visibility or authority but about making connections where few existed, ensuring that different corners of the city could work together, however imperfectly, toward something better.

While it’s often assumed that the most effective solutions must come from within the communities they serve, some emerge through steady, mutual engagement — built on trust, time, and the willingness to stay in conversation.

While community-led change remains the vital goal, a new generation of civic intermediaries are bridging the space between lived experience and institutional knowledge. Fluent in democratic design, local governance, historical context and practical constraints, they don’t dictate or disappear but work alongside, helping communities navigate systems that weren’t designed with them in mind.

One of the quiet innovations at FDR Park was the hiring of Drake-Cortés — not just as a city employee, but as a dedicated liaison between the park and the Latino vendors. His role, which lasted three years, wasn’t typical of municipal staffing.

His job was to move between people and systems — to make sure voices weren’t lost and plans didn’t miss the point. It’s the kind of bridge work public spaces depend on, but too often it goes unpaid, unnoticed, or left to people already doing too much. Still, it’s what helps make shared places truly work for everyone.

The work between people

Drake-Cortés believes his work with the vendors was built on trust over time. He says he’s proud to have “demystified the process” of formalizing their businesses.

“Getting our vendors to believe that they can do that and are capable of doing that… and that they see me not just as a person who had to hold them accountable, but as someone they can rely on for help with anything – I receive calls from them asking, ‘Do you know this? How can I do that?’ – I’m happy that I can play that role in their lives.”

This sense of shared investment shaped the Latino Market into something larger than a weekend marketplace, it became a hub of opportunity and recognition.

While his position may have been unique, the process Alvaro Drake-Cortés embraced was elemental to constructive change: sustained engagement, deep listening, and adaptive problem-solving. It was a kind of democratic labor — the slow, often invisible work of building relationships, and holding space for others to step forward.

In that rhythm of showing up and staying present, something quiet but foundational took root — a civic commons built not from grand designs, but from workaday plans powered by purpose and belief.