Pilot program puts food trucks in parking lot off the Eastern Promenade

Leslie Kaynor hands her grandchildren, Lydia Mavodones, 7, and Jack Mavodones, 5, treats from the ice product truck at Portland’s Eastern Prom in June 2020. Brianna Soukup/Personnel Photographer

Food stuff vehicles will no for a longer period be permitted on Portland’s Jap Promenade roadway as component of a pilot program to much better deal with trash, protection and sound fears in the well known park and nearby community.

The plan is predicted to commence June 15, the metropolis mentioned on Friday.

The Jap Prom has turn into a preferred place for trucks to set up in current a long time, and this spring the town commenced searching at various strategies to far better control the impacts. Rather than lining the Eastern Promenade roadway, food items vans will be permitted only in the middle-degree parking whole lot on Cutter Avenue, which connects the promenade to East End Seaside, according to a memo Interim City Supervisor Danielle West wrote to the Town Council on Friday.

“This solution was favored by the huge the greater part of the general public that offered public comment, and I believe it will be the most efficient in balancing the priorities of citizens, compact-enterprise proprietors, and people to the Jap Promenade,” West wrote in the memo.

Roughly 10 parking areas will be available for meals truck functions in the Cutter Road ton. If interest exceeds the variety of spaces offered, the metropolis will make permitting conclusions by lottery. Having said that, vehicles could workforce up to share a location if they don’t system on making use of their places each day.

“Some really do not appear each working day, so if two trucks want to team up and regulate who comes for that location on which day, they could do that,” metropolis spokesperson Jessica Grondin explained. The permits are envisioned to come to be offered commencing up coming Friday, Might 6.

The permits will be issued at no value to meals truck operators this 12 months, according to West’s memo, but the city may possibly contemplate a allow payment in future several years. The plan is remaining regarded as a seasonal pilot method and is anticipated to run as a result of mid-Oct. It will be evaluated during the time in scenario there is a need to have to increase or revise it in 2023.

More than the final two years, in component owing to the pandemic and enthusiasm for out of doors eating, the metropolis has observed a sizeable improve in meals truck activity on the Promenade. City personnel this spring came up with a couple of possibilities to greater take care of the scenario and concerns about these challenges as enhanced trash, pedestrian protection and environmental impacts from carbon emissions and heavily compacted soil around tree root zones.

Food TRUCK Court docket OPPOSED

In addition to applying the middle-level parking large amount on Cutter Avenue, the town was also thinking about alternatives to limit the quantity of vehicles on the Promenade and identify them either concerning Quebec and Turner streets or in between Turner and Congress streets.

The difficulty drew major community interest and debate, together with a petition started off by neighbors in the Munjoy Hill region who strongly opposed the creation of a “food truck court” concerning Turner and Congress streets and who urged the city to use the Cutter Road large amount.

Diane Davison, who was among the organizers of the petition, praised West’s choice Friday. “I applaud the city supervisor for executing the ideal point for safety’s sake and for so numerous causes that have been expressed in new months,” said Davison, introducing that moving the vehicles to the parking good deal will far better safeguard the historic nature of the promenade.

Tony Napolitano, a close by resident, called employing the Cutter Avenue good deal a “great notion.”

“It will be much safer for the people and children utilizing the city playground in the park,” Napolitano claimed. “The meals vans make it a bottleneck appropriate there in that section.”

Garrett Champlin and Ellen O’Keefe, co-entrepreneurs of the Eighty 8 Donuts café and foodstuff truck, said they ended up hoping that the town would develop the foods truck courtroom by shifting the targeted traffic lanes involving Turner and Congress streets.

“I considered it would be fairly great, very classy and very progressive and it would push tourism,” Champlin reported of the thought.

But he even now expects company to be good in the parking whole lot.

The truck has a great following on Instagram, and people today will normally obtain it if they put up its location.

DISAPPOINTMENT AND Approval

“We unquestionably were being proponents of becoming up major (on the Japanese Prom) and were being ready to file an software and pay back the payment to get a allow,” Champlin claimed. “We’ll however file for a allow for the center lot – but undoubtedly, relative to the higher deck alternative, it’s a tiny disappointing.”

The chair of the city’s Parks Commission resigned early in April above the foodstuff truck difficulty just after a conference in which a movement he designed to recommend the parking great deal plan failed on a 4-4 vote.

“To me, this consequence reveals a essential disjuncture between commissioners in the vision for our parks, and the value that we connect to the historic and esthetic proportions of our parks,” Michael Mertaugh wrote in saying his resignation on April 7.

Mertaugh said Friday that he approves of the city manager’s determination.

“I’m delighted to report my satisfaction with that,” he claimed. “I consider it genuinely reflects the will of Portland inhabitants.”

Mertaugh had advocated for a restrict of 7 meals vans in the ton, and he suggested the town appraise the encounter with 10 and see how it goes.

“I think it would be a optimistic for the metropolis to not persuade the congregation of all the food stuff vans in one site – and definitely not on the Japanese Prom,” he mentioned.

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