They filed in, picked up a pair of city handouts, and then sat down with their notebooks and grumbles. One guy, reviewing the papers in his hand, had this to say: “This is bullshit.”
He was one of nearly 100 food cart operators who packed a city conference room this afternoon to learn more about Commissioner Randy Leonard’s crackdown on illegal porches and decks that have flourished in a pair of food cart pods downtown.
That crackdown was rumored for weeks, an issue first broken by KATU. But it got rolling this month after Leonard announced at city council that he was making the structures—worried about the chances of fire and collapse—a higher priority for the city’s building inspectors than checking nuisance houses.
At times, the session grew slightly heated—no surprise given the popularity and passion over the city’s food carts. Letters went out last week to landlords at two pods where complaints have been lodged, at SW 4th and Hall and SW 3rd and Washington, and vendors have been worried they might lose their spots.
But aside from the occasional mutters, vendors mostly came with questions. They wanted to know how many hoops they’d need to run through if they wanted to make their structures legal. They asked about details like clearance between the carts, or what kinds of awnings and ramps are permissible without needing a permit.
“This is an unusual meeting,” Leonard told the room, noting the city was forgoing fines, typically the first step in any enforcement push. “But normally you don’t build a house and then seek a permit and find out if it’s okay. We’re trying to help you succeed while trying to find out if your structures are legal.”
Want more wonky food cart details? Keep reading!
Before the Q&A portion of the afternoon started, officials from the Bureau of Development Services a primer on the city’s complaint and enforcement process and then laid out how and why cities have building codes and the various other inspection cart owners would have to endure to get legal.
In Portland, the definition of what’s a building—and thus covered by the permit process—is “very broad.” In short, It’s almost anything that touches the ground. Among the exceptions: the carts themselves, provided they keep the wheels on. Same for small storage sheds and awnings physically connected to a cart. Tents are okay, provided they don’t stay up permanently, meaning no more than 180 days a year.
But while officials said operators were welcome to try to get permits for the porches they’ve already built, some of them incredibly elaborate structures containing benches and tables, they also basically urged them not to bother trying and to tear them down instead. (They have until early January to get legit, but may get more time if they attempt to tackle the permitting process.)
It can cost hundreds of dollars, they said, and not work out in the end. Owners need to show BDS inspectors their carts won’t won’t collapse under the weight of snow, or in an earthquake or a bad windstorm (that means digging a foundation). Then there’s the approval from the fire marshal and possibly other city bureaus, like the Bureau of Transportation, if a cart or its paraphernalia block the sidewalk.
“If you try to permit these, it will be very difficult,” says Terry Whitehill, the BDS official who oversees the team that reviews building plans. “It is not an easy thing to do.”
Greg Goodman owns City Center Parking and controls the lot hosting the 3rd and Washington pod. He spoke toward the end of the meeting and acknowledged that his staff could have done a better job monitoring his lots before cart operators sunk their hard-won profits into restaurant-like additions. But he also said carts, by definition, are supposed to be noblemobile, no matter how much business they do.
“To a certain extent, you guys are a victim of your own success,” he said. “We want to work with you.”
Reid Barrett, who slings Asian dumplings at Dump Truck over at 11th and Alder said something to Leonard after the meeting that he acknowledged wouldn’t make him very popular. With other vendors, that is.
“I don’t think people appreciate the leeway they’re getting.”
Yeah, it IS bu!!$#!+.
The same, corrupt bu!!$#!+ the rest of us have been putting up with for years from those elected to run this city.
How does it feel?
How are food carts, by definition, noble?
The noble comment means they should not be subject to the rules as the rest of us peons, since they embody a collective ‘feeling’ Portlanders need to fool themselves about their city on a daily basis.
@D: How exactly is this bullshit?
I really appreciate the fact that the City is treating these people with kid gloves. It would not be difficult for them to just go in and tear down all of the unlicensed structures.
@smirk: Did Leonard actually use the phrase, “propane-tank missiles”? I fucking hope so!
@Graham: smirk?!
As for Randy, he said something quite close.
First they made me put a brake on my fixie, now this?!?
@Denis: My bad. I realized my mistake right as I hit the publish button.
i love the food carts but there is no reason for seating and covered eating areas. you’re already eating out of the back of storage shed, you might as well just sit on the curb or keep walking while you eat. this reminds me of when i was a kid and would build forts out of blankets and chairs with my sister. we would keep making the forts more and more elaborate until we realized that basically what we ended up with was a bedroom with chairs in the middle of it and blankets as wallpaper. keep the food carts as food carts and leave the patios in the suburbs and on the rooftops of yuppie condos.
It’s BS, Graham – if you have ever tried to navigate the waters of undefined and arbitrarily enforced city codes.
Try it and come back to me.
If food cart vendors have been building fixed structures without first checking to see if it’s permissible, it’s kind of their own fault if they’re getting into trouble over it now.
Thirdly, the only reason the city is doing this is because they were called out by KATU for not selectively – or not at all- enforcing their OWN rules on Portland’s politically correct protected class.
reality check for the foodcarts.
selling food out of your van = foodcart.
building a seating area = restaurant.
if one of those patios collapsed and crushed a bunch of people, foodcarts would not have the insurance to cover it because…….that’s right, because they’re foodcarts! if you’re a foodcart owner, well, it sucks. but it’s not bullshit. you can sell food out of a trailer or open a restaurant, but you can’t have it both ways
“crushed a bunch of people” lol
This is quite an outpouring of bile about some unbelievably simple structures, and it would definitely surprise me to learn that food carts carry no insurance – if I owned a commercial lot that rented space to a cart, proof of adequate insurance would be an obvious requirement from any tenants.
who put the angry gerbil up D’s butt?
So the only issue is KATU’s ratings? No one has actually been harmed? Ok. Thanks.
For as many people work downtown, there really aren’t a lot of good options to eat lunch in the winter and stay dry, unless you a) count the food court at Pioneer Place (which basically is all corporate food, except for one or two exceptions) or b) get your food and go back to the break room or your cube in your office, or c) sit on a bench someplace in the rain. It’s nice to be able to get out of the office for a while and have a meal, and these new SIMPLE structures are a great way to do that. It’s a pity that the City can’t figure out a better way to accommodate these instead of lumping them in with houses. These are nothing like houses.
@Paul – If it ain’t mobile, it’s not a food cart.
I personally applaud the enforcement.
Is that person in the picture using a chair for his backpack? Put your stuff on the floor, man! Your dumb backpack isn’t that important.
Wasn’t there a city permit thingy implemented awhile back to subsidize small housing? I wonder if the food carts could somehow be grandfathered into that.
Maybe the parking lot owner (who makes a mint off the food carts) could just build a large covered seating area in the middle, like a SE Asian outdoor food court? They could charge higher rents then, it would be permitted by the city, food cart owners will get higher sales, we’ll get somewhere to stay dry… Win win win win?
The dumpling man is wise and his potato dumplings are my jam.
” if you have ever tried to navigate the waters of undefined and arbitrarily enforced city codes.
Try it and come back to me.”
I have, D. But I’m not whingeing about it like it’s merely specific to this town. That shit’s universal. The missing component to all your troll-ish crap is always specifics. Feel free to share your woeful tale of persecution any time.
@Reymont — you’re missing the point. Who cares what they’re called? It’s food.
@SPK: Seems like whatever BS “expose” drummed up by KATU for sweeps week results in reckless overreaction from the city. Remember the reporter sitting in a chair in the SE Holgate bike lane to prove no one uses it?
My #1 regret of 2010 is that I wasn’t riding that route that morning. I would have barreled directly into him and then sued the hell out of KATU. Their lack of journalistic ethics and completely willful ignorance of what is “newsworthy” just disgusts me. I’ll stick to KOIN and KGW.
@Oregometry: Correct title please – “Willamette Week’s news partner KATU News”. Says it all really.
eric – the city politicians did and continue to do so.
TSW – It’s the inconsistency, hypocrisy and favoritedness/corruption that stands head and shoulders above other cities.
They cannot define their own codes, which are contradictory and arbitrary. They excuse this as being ‘complaint-based’ but once you pull a permit EVERYTHING is subject to their whims, unfairly, unevenly and exhorbitantly expensive, time consuming and bordering on the impossible.
Which is why Leonard’s discouragement of permit pulling and the ‘do it if you dare’ quote from the O story is dead on.
D,
Thanks for reinforceing your own reputation by not answering my question.
Troll outreach terminated.
As a sad addendum to this, I have decided today to end a longstanding abusive relationship with what had become my favorite falafel cart.
Paul, there are a lot of places you can buy food and sit down out of the elements. They’re called restaurants. There are generally two or three to a block.
Restuarants are actually the main issue to me. They have to pay higher rent, provide restrooms, and deal with all kinds of requirements that food carts don’t have to. If I were a restaurant owner dealing with these extra costs and watched food carts basically building restaurants onto their side without these costs, I’d be pissed. I work near one of the pods in question. Some of these structures are basically awnings, but some are quite elaborate, wired for electricity and so on. The expectation that they’d go without notice was pretty silly.
Yea, I often can’t decide between Higgins and sitting on a curb eating steamed chicken crumpled up in paper.
Oh, Im sorry. Under an awning on a curb.
As usual, everything is taken to extremes and overcomplicated. Let’s keep it simple.
* Food carts: serve food from you cart.
* Food carts: don’t build extra crap.
I expect a check to my legal consultation fees made out to a one “Sense, Common”.
Blabby, you must be talking about some other downtown, because there certainly any two to three to a block near where I work (the Portland Building) unless you count Subway and McDonald’s (back to my previous point). If there were enough (decently priced with decent food) restaurants downtown to service everyone who works here, then why is there so much demand at the carts?
Also, restaurants have servers, bathrooms, etc. These are not anything like that. They’re just giving you a table to sit at, out of the rain.
Paul Cone doesn’t understand what constitutes a restaurant, a cart, or the difference between the two.