Vendors prepare for new locations under city law

With little more than one month and counting until the city's new street and sidewalk vending ordinance takes effect, vendors around University City are beginning to plan for the changes in store when the clock chimes at midnight August 4. Jack Shannon, the University's top economic development official, said the vendors who applied for one of the 47 locations in the five Penn-owned fresh air food plazas were informed of their locations via letters mailed to their home addresses late Friday afternoon. However, all of the vendors interviewed by the Summer Pennsylvanian on Tuesday and Wednesday had yet to receive notification. And vendors who will not be relocated -- by choice or circumstance -- to the food plazas must find other arrangements for when the ordinance banning vending on most streets and sidewalks in University City takes effect. The legislation passed Council with unanimous support April 23 and will take effect next month, 90 days after it was signed by Mayor Ed Rendell. To sell from a cart, stand or truck in one of the 103 new street locations in University City, vendors must have submitted an application to the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections by last Friday. The ordinance charges L&I; with devising a system for distributing licenses to street vendors. Shannon said that there were more applicants for spots in the food plazas than the sites would be able to hold, but that "all vendors who could not be accommodated in the fresh air food plazas have had their basic vending information forwarded to Licenses and Inspections" by the University. He added that the food plazas at 34th and Walnut streets, 37th and Walnut streets and 34th and Spruce streets experienced demand greater than the plazas' capacity. Meanwhile, those plazas by the periphery of campus -- at 40th and Walnut streets and 33rd and South streets -- were much less in demand among the vendors. "We suspected that because of relative displacement that certain locations would be more attractive than others," Shannon explained. Though many vendors applied to both the University and the city in hopes of increasing their chances of securing a space, many vendors tied their hopes to only one or the other. Scott Goldstein, who resigned in April as chairperson of the University City Vendors Alliance -- one of the ad hoc groups created last year to fight the vending ordinance -- was confident that his Scott's Vegetarian Cuisine food truck would be relocated to a University food plaza. "I just happen to meet the criteria for a private space," he said, referring to his residency in West Philadelphia, unique vegetarian product and high-quality fare. Goldstein also made note of his seniority, having been a vendor in the area for the last 12 years. The namesake and owner of Sophie's Lunch Truck at 34th and Walnut streets, who did not wish to give her last name, said that she too was hopeful for a private space based on seniority. She has been a vendor since 1974. "But we don't know what's going to happen though," she added. That sentiment was echoed by Sonny Bherma of the Taco Pal food cart on the 3600 block of Spruce Street, who is waiting to hear back from L&I.; "Right now no one knows where they are going to be," he said. Like Bherma, many vendors chose to apply only to L&I; and not the food plazas, preferring a street location close to their current sites. "People at the hospital know us," said the owner of the B&J; food cart on the 3400 block of Spruce Street, across from HUP. "Every department knows us. The people that pick [the vendors' new sites], how do they know us?" Like many, B&J;'s owner -- who did not wish to be identified -- is afraid of moving far from her current location. "It'd be like starting a business over," she said. Shannon said that "consumer demand that had been coming on an ad hoc basis" was one of the factors in making decisions on food plaza locations. He cited the case of one cart operator on whose behalf his office received more than 100 e-mail message from HUP employees. Shannon insisted that when all of the food plaza and street locations were assigned, no vendor would be driven from University City as a result of the ordinance. "We are here to make sure every vendor has a home in one of those two sets of locations," he said. But Goldstein -- who has faulted the University and the city for being slow to relocate vendors -- was skeptical of the University's claim. "Being accommodated doesn't mean that they will have a viable location to earn a living," he said. That's a shame."

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