GUEST COLUMN: Vendors' comments troubling

Roman Petyk's, Guest Columnist Roman Petyk's, Guest Columnist Last Friday's short vendor strike and the visceral tone of many recent comments made by vendor leaders offer some troubling insights into their attitude as they try to respond to the effort to bring some measure of order to the anarchy that currently characterizes vending in University City. Vendors who have grown accustomed to operating with virtually no regulation now present themselves as victims of a pushy 800-pound gorilla determined to drive them out of business. The question which the University community should ask, however, is whether the outbursts of rage we hear from the vendors are justified. Will vendors be treated differently from other neighborhood businesses? Will they be burdened with vindictive and unfair regulations? Will they be forced to abandon their businesses in University City? By any rational standard the answer to all of these questions is, simply, no. When the many pages of verbiage are boiled down to their essence, the proposed ordinance will make only modest changes to vending in University City. Moreover, when judged against the zoning and signage ordinances that exist in most cities, the proposed regulations are quite reasonable. Vendors will be asked to comply with modest design standards that will establish a uniform, level playing field for all vendors. These standards will minimize clutter and obstruction of sidewalks and will keep vending carts and trucks from becoming the mobile billboards for soft drinks and cigarettes that a few have become. (It is a dirty little secret that many vendors derive substantial revenues from plastering their vehicles with these advertisements.) Because the proposed regulations will largely institutionalize the existing practices of the best-operated vending businesses, they will have only a minimal impact on all but a handful of rogue operators. It is also worth noting that the proposed regulations are virtually identical to those currently applied to vendors operating in Center City, who have survived such regulation without any apparent ill effect. Some vendors will be required to relocate their businesses, but not a single vendor will be thrown out of University City. When the additional fresh air food plaza locations are constructed, most consumers won't have to walk any farther to find food than they do today. While relocation is always painful for a business, even Scott Goldstein, the Vendor Alliance leader, privately concedes that in the long run most food vendors will do just fine at new locations, if only because most of their customers will have no more convenient source of food. Judging from the vendors' public response to the proposed relocation plan, however, one would think that the University is proposing to abrogate the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the United Nations Charter in one fell swoop. Given such apocalyptic declarations, a sense of perspective is in order. Virtually every major city in the country has adopted zoning laws that govern the location and operations of all kinds of businesses. Zoning is an accepted feature of urban life because it helps keep cities manageable by making sure that valuable but potentially incompatible uses do not collide with each other to make life unbearable. Indeed, a judge once described the purpose of zoning as "making sure that we don't have to live with a pig in the parlor." Vendors have escaped such regulation in the past because they were generally small operators. As long as vendors operated from carts that were pushed up and down the sidewalk, no one really cared what the cart looked like or how much noise it made because, in a few minutes, it had moved down the street anyway. Now vendors have become established businesses taking up to 40 feet of sidewalk space for as long as 15 hours a day. As such, vending businesses have become no different from any other land use in their ability to make a mess of the urban fabric and, thus, it is virtually impossible to make the case that they shouldn't be subject to the same degree of zoning type regulation as any other business. The bottom line is not all that difficult to grasp. There simply is no God-given right to plop down a cart or truck on the sidewalk just because that's where the customers are. Non-vending businesses have long recognized that their search for a convenient location must be made in the context of zoning codes, environmental regulations, rent structures and the like that balance the desires of an individual business against the legitimate needs of the larger community. No matter how vociferously and angrily they might insist otherwise, vendors are no different. With or without an ordinance, the University as owner of the property abutting most of the current vending locations could lawfully enforce far more onerous regulations and locational restrictions than those currently on the table. Indeed, a good case can be made that the University should reduce the total number of vendors in University City over the next five to 10 years -- especially as more space for moderately-priced restaurants becomes available. Those who hold this view believe that the University should insist that over time, vendors be fully integrated into the nascent University City renaissance by becoming part of a new generation of restaurateurs and other small businesses operating from leased locations around campus and in the nearby neighborhoods. If walking to one of those new restaurants seems less convenient than picking up food at a favorite vending location, consider just how "convenient" it really is to stand in a driving rain next to a noisy, smoky generator waiting for a meal at the "truck." As consumers, we have been conditioned to accept this dreary reality, but we should expect more. Wouldn't it be more convenient and civilized for all concerned if vendor food were available as "take-out" from a heated, enclosed restaurant, perhaps even one with a few seats? It's really not a bad vision, either for us as consumers or for the vendors.