Eric Hess at Sightline critiques street food policy in Vancouver, Seattle and Portland. We have a ways to go before the former catches up with the latter. For instance, about Vancouver:
Officials credit early success to the minimization of red tape. And it’s true that Vancouver’s regulations are less restrictive than before: the city’s efforts to both designate sidewalk stalls and allow
vendors to find their own locations make it easy for carts to launch quickly, while not overly limiting locations. Crucially, city officials have expressed interest in lifting restrictions outside downtown—perhaps even lifting the ban on vending from private property.
But unless the city changes its official plans, in five years, the city will have introduced only 100 carts, fewer than Portland added in 2010 alone. Why limit the number of vendors at all? This year, over 50 applicants sought just a dozen permits. Vancouver can close the cart gap with Portland by lifting the cap and letting vendors hit the streets.
In Portland, permanently locating several food carts on one lot downtown appears to work well.
If we can turn vacant lots awaiting development into community gardens perhaps Vancouver could dedicate one or two of these lots to a group of food carts, albeit temporarily.
Restaurants are closing weekly. Carts don’t help their lunch business.
After scouting the area and paying rent and such, the city puts a cart outside their business!!??
And restaurants are also opening weekly. As are every other type of business. If there really is some exodus of restauranters, I haven’t noticed it and you have no stats to back it up.
On the high end side of things, Budd Kanke recently got out of the biz, closing Goldfish in Yaletown (to be replaced by a high end sushi place) and selling Joe Fortes to David Aisenstat (of Keg, Hy’s, Gotham & Shore Club fame).
Apparently, Aisenstat’s Shore Club will close down, be gutted and converted to a Keg, then the Keg on Thurlow across from Joe Fortes will close down.
Restaurant openings and closings are part of the business. Restaurants often get their start buying up leaseholds where a restaurant spent big bucks installing kitchen equipment before going bust. It’s a bit of a predictable financing mechanism.