Policy / April 14, 2026
Five years after starting to organize themselves, delivery people have a space to rest and recharge their electric bikes.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech during the Union Now Rally to launch a nonprofit organization designed to build worker power across the country, April 12, 2026, in New York.
(Selçuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images) As a food delivery driver in New York, 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 concourse of 60 Wall Street have long been gathering places for delivery workers like him who work in lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn area.
“We always thought it would be great if we could have a space where we could rest or have coffee when we were working,” said Ajche, an immigrant from Guatemala and co-founder of Los Deliverista Unidos, a delivery group.
A little more than five years later, that idea became a reality when the nation’s first delivery center for delivery workers opened near New York City Hall on April 7.
The hub on Broadway near Murray Street was first announced by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who pledged to use funds from a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to build rest areas for delivery workers in October 2021.
After Schumer secured $1 million in federal funds, delivery workers and their advocates hoped to move quickly to build the center on Parks Department land. The project made little progress under the Eric Adams administration, and 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 the center’s modern design was out of step with the historic district and feared it would attract crowds. However, they could not legally stop the project, and in January the Mamdani administration made completing the hub a priority.
Current number
At last week’s inauguration, Schumer addressed the delays. “For years, my office pushed and encouraged the previous administration, overcoming bureaucratic hurdles and overcoming inertia,” he said. “I want to commend the new administration. They moved quickly to expedite the process.”
On opening day, the delivery center, consisting of two rooms and no furniture, was still not fully operational: Con Edison had failed to locate the electrical hookup and said it would have to return. There will also be no toilets, due to a lack of water connections.
But workers and advocates were thrilled to see that the space they had organized for was now a reality. “We live in a system where the entire city was designed for the rich, for cars. Why not for workers?” asked Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Workers Justice Project.
Guallpa said the center would 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 deactivation and recover stolen wages and tips.
The hub will be open Monday to Friday from 11 a.m. am at 5 p.m.. Workers can also repair the apartments, charge their e-bikes at two outdoor charging stations and charge their phones at the hub. E-cyclists can drop off the battery and check progress via a mobile app, which will alert them when the battery is ready for pickup. “We can come here before or after the lunch rush or before the dinner orders start coming in,” Ajche said.
The recharge and rest centers were one of the key objectives of Los Deliveristas Unidos, created during the pandemic in 2020 by Ajche and Guallpa. The city’s 80,000 delivery workers, 90 percent of whom are immigrants, make 2.64 million deliveries each week, and they now hope to open similar centers on the Upper West Side and the Bronx under an administration receptive to their ideas.
The hub’s 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 won a $5.2 million settlement from Uber Eats, HungryPanda and Fantuan for subcontracting nearly 50,000 workers.
“The streets are our workplaces, and we must fight for dignity to exist here,” Ajche said. “We celebrate today, but the work is not done. Our work will end when every worker in this city has full rights, safety, fair pay and dignity.”
Prajwal Bhatt Prajwal Bhat is a journalist based in New York.
