After hearing that the food truck pilot project was a flop, St. Albert council decided to revert back to the old way of doing things.
Rather than create a set of specific guidelines for mobile vendors, such as food trucks, fruit stands and newspaper vendors, these businesses will continue to be regulated through the city’s traffic bylaw.
Joan Barber manager of business retention and expansion, presented council with the results of the 2015 mobile vendor pilot project on Monday. The guidelines saw the creation of four designated food truck sites across the city, available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Feedback from food truck owners revealed that the sites were not ideal, since they didn’t generate enough foot traffic. As a result, the spots were often left empty, leading to a number of complaints from residents about the underutilization of the sites. Residents felt that valuable parking stalls were being wasted on food trucks that never showed up.
The complaints mostly centred on the site in the St. Albert Place parking lot, which removed two handicap stalls, but Coun. Bob Russell indicated he had also received unhappy correspondence about Lacombe Lake Park.
Ultimately, feedback indicated that food truck owners would like to be on Perron Street, said Barber, who told council that given the pilot was a bust and that the level of interest remained low, there doesn’t seem to be a need for specific rules surrounding mobile vendors. Aside from the seven food trucks that signed on to last year’s pilot project, the economic team has received only three requests for vending licenses in the past three years.
Under the traffic bylaw, food truck owners and other mobile vendors would require written permission to operate on public lands, such as municipal parking lot, sidewalks, roads and parks. Vendors would still be required to get a business license.
Council expressed concerns about leaving what could be considered “political” decisions to city staff.
While food trucks are widely accepted in St. Albert – save for the criticism from other business owners that food truck owners don’t pay for the spot they occupy on public lands – other vendors types have been deemed more “controversial.”
“I’m not sure it’s fair to pass the buck off to the city engineer when it comes to the vendors that might be a little more controversial in nature,” said Coun. Tim Osborne.
Kate Polkovsky, city engineer, said in an interview that decisions would be based “100 per cent” on the safety of the site, not the nature of the business.
“We want to make sure that it’s a safe location that doesn’t impact either pedestrian or motor vehicle traffic. That’s the main issue we’d be looking at: safety,” she said.
Parking would also come into consideration said Polkovsky. While she isn’t outright saying that food trucks on Perron Street is never going to happen, the city engineer said that with the current parking constraint it’s a little unlikely.
With the St. Anne Street realignment and the additional parking that project creates, however, food trucks could become a possibility on the future promenade, “depending on the traffic patterns that come to be.”
Polkovsky said the engineering department would work with vendors to determine a suitable location for their business.
Food trucks and mobile vendors would still be welcome at special events, such as Seven Hill Music Fest or the St. Albert Farmers’ Market, but under a proposed new set of rules, also presented to council Monday, it would be at the discretion of the special event permit holder to decide if and which vendors would be allowed on the designated site.
