I’m a huge fan of the Portland-style street food scene. In Portland, food trucks are regulated as vehicles as long as they have wheels and they aren’t connected to permanent utilities like power or gas. This allows carts to assemble into “pods” in surface-level parking lots, so people can walk by a pod and choose from any of ten or twenty different kinds of food.
There are some obvious locations that would be good for pods to form if Kalamazoo adopts the same kind of approach. Prime locations might be e.g. between the courthouse and Bronson Park, or any of the lots between the Entertainment District and the festival area. Or one of the lots near the train/bus station. Portland also had success with pods formed near popular bars that have lousy food (Bell’s, I’m pretty much looking right at you).
So when I see articles like this one, I’m hopeful that we can find the path. But questions like this:
Another member, Bjorn Green, asked how the DDA could regulate the design of food trucks and how the odors coming from a congregation of food trucks would affect neighboring businesses.
“How are we going to deal with the congregation if there’s four or five of six trucks together and you get a whole funky group of smells?” he asked.
are either deliberately mendacious, or just totally missing the point.
