Vending restrictions to take effect in July

Winston Churchill High School '97 Potomac, Md. A longtime University institution will change dramatically over the summer as a new City Council ordinance regulating outdoor food trucks and carts goes into effect, greatly restricting the operations of the dozens of vendors who had once called campus home. Despite Council's vote to approve the University-backed ordinance regulating campus vending, the year-old controversy surrounding the topic remains far from over. Penn will continue to confront related issues, including assigning the new locations to vendors, throughout the summer and at the beginning of next semester. When the ordinance goes into effect July 22, most of the approximately 90 vendors currently operating in University City will be moved from their present locations to one of either 103 new street and sidewalk locations or 45 slots in the five food plazas the University is building on its property to hold vendors displaced by the bill. Many of the 103 locations, however, are relatively far from campus and considered undesirable by vendors. The vending controversy began in May 1997, when the University submitted its first proposal for an ordinance to regulate vending to Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, whose West Philadelphia district includes Penn. Penn has sought to regulate vending for several years, citing safety concerns and vendors' negative effect on its ability to lure attractive retailers to the area. The ordinance prohibits vending in front of retail stores and classroom buildings. The bill also bans food trucks and carts on many streets and sidewalks around campus and, a year after its enactment, outlaws the use of electrical generators. As a result of the ordinance, vendors will be charged a $2,700.50 annual fee to park in designated parking spots, instead of using meters as they currently do. Council unanimously approved the legislation April 23. Although vendor and consumer groups lost their battle to significantly change the bill, they are still worried about how the process of selecting vendors for the new sites will work. Specifically, critics have expressed concerns that under the new legislation, food trucks and carts that have long parked in certain locations will lose their sports to the vendors that have been on campus the longest. The ordinance charges the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections with creating a process for distributing licenses for specific locations that takes into account vendors' seniority. In an effort to smooth the transition to the new system, University officials hope to finish building the food plazas by the time the ordinance goes into effect, according to Jack Shannon, Penn's top economic development official. Construction on the first food plaza, located at 40th Street between Walnut and Locust streets, began April 13. University officials are in the process of soliciting bids for the other four food plazas, Shannon said. The plazas will provide outdoor seating for customers, as well as electrical hook -ups, sewage, water lines and improved lighting for the vendors at the cost of $1 a month. Although the ordinance eventually passed in Council without much trouble, the process of getting an ordinance before the body was far more tumultuous. The University's first proposal last May sparked an angry outcry from students, faculty members, staff, vendors, and other community members who claimed Penn did not seek sufficient community input. In the face of these protests, the University withdrew its first proposal. After many hours of negotiations with the University City Vendors Alliance and the Penn Consumer Alliance, the two ad-hoc groups formed last summer which tried to make the bill less restrictive, University administrators submitted a revised version of the vending ordinance November 25, leading to a new round of protests. As a result of the opposition, Blackwell asked the PCA and the UCVA to submit their own versions of the ordinance. The two groups gave her separate proposals on January 12. Blackwell held a meeting in early February intended to hammer out a final version of the ordinance. After the five hour meeting, Blackwell asked Penn officials to draft the proposal. But the UCVA and the PCA have accused University officials of reneging on several compromises they allegedly made at that meeting. University officials have denied the groups' accusations. Despite ongoing protests from many sectors of the University community, Blackwell introduced the legislation to Council on February 12, and it passed not long after.