City Council postpones vote on vending

Protests convinced the council to wait until fall to act on proposed limits on street and sidewalk vending. After weeks of debate between University officials and food truck operators, the City Council in June postponed implementing strict limits on street vending near campus until the fall. The decision represented a small victory for the vendors and the coalition of students who had formed to oppose the ordinance, which City Councilwoman Janie Blackwell proposed late last school year in response to requests from the University. The bill would reorganize street and sidewalk vending around campus by creating specified vending locations on parts of 34th and 38th streets and Walnut and Spruce streets. The proposed vending areas would include lighting and seating. No vendors would be allowed anywhere else near campus. Upon learning about the proposal, students and vendors flooded Blackwell's mailbox in City Hall with complaints --Eleading her to suggest postponing action until more students, faculty and staff returned from summer vacations. "I'm happy [the ordinance] has been held off until after the summer," said Scott Goldstein of the University City Vendors Alliance. "[Vendors] are opposed to the bill as it stands, but I am actually very optimistic that everything will work out." The postponement capped several weeks of confrontations between the vendors and their supporters and Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Carol Scheman, who has led the University's efforts to regulate vending around campus. "The council probably wants to further examine what Center City has done with vending," Scheman said after the ordinance was put off until the fall. "But I know they understand the need for prompt regulation." She added that "it would have been better for everyone if the ordinance was passed" but said she trusted Blackwell's decision. Undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and local residents banded together to form the Penn Consumers' Alliance to Save Food Trucks, and worked with the University City Vendors Alliance to develop a strategy to fight the plan. "I think [the ordinance] is more of a show of force that the University has power," Bioengineering graduate student Bryon Gomberg said. "I can't think of why they would care so much. It's not that many trucks." The group -- voicing concern over the University's motives of health and safety and their lack of input in the University's decision process -- did not invite Scheman to their summer meetings. "They seem more interested in talking without the facts than with the facts," she said. Throughout the vending fight, Scheman said the University had no intention of closing down vendors, but that the ordinance would regulate vending so food trucks would be convenient and safe. But her opponents suggested that Sansom Common and other retail initiatives are the real motivation for the bill, and that the University is trying to minimize competition for its new investments. Some vendors have already had to relocate, as Sansom Common construction closed the sidewalks near 36th and Walnut streets. The City Council has not yet set a date to take up the measure again.