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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Stores Push Back on Legalized Street Vending

The February passage of a citywide ordinance to decriminalize street vending was a long-awaited relief for the estimated 50,000 sidewalk entrepreneurs in Los Angeles, but some brick-and-mortar businesses feel the move was hasty – and unfair. “Street vending can undercut a brick-and-mortar retailer if the merchandise happens to be the same,” Leslie Elkan, president of the board at the Village at Sherman Oaks Business Improvement District, said. “It’s just not fair to these business owners who work so hard.” Her view is shared by others in the region, including the United Chambers of Commerce, a network of 32 business organizations in the San Fernando Valley. The group sent letters to area members of the Los Angeles City Council in mid-March requesting clarification on a number of issues regarding street vending in the Valley. Some worry that the economic ramifications of permitting street vending are overlooked by decision-makers, who have said that the decision to decriminalize it was based on a need to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation under the administration of President Donald Trump. Armen Kesablyan, owner of eight-month-old Igloo Parlor ice cream shop in Sherman Oaks, understands the pressures of the current political climate. But he contends that the struggle of getting a business off the ground in an expensive area is already hard enough without competition from the street. “If you look at this from a strictly humanitarian standpoint, you might think (decriminalization of street vending) is a really good thing,” Kesablyan said. “But you’re harming so many of the people who are trying to make a living, who are paying back into the system to try to make it better.” But Rudy Espinoza, executive director of the Los Angeles Urban Renewal Network, said the policies for which he and others in the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign are advocating have been drawn up in a way that will protect brick-and-mortar businesses, not hurt them. “The concerns of the small businesses are valid, but we’ve been advocating as a campaign for a responsible enforcement strategy,” he said. “We realize if we don’t have a good strategy that it will fail, and we want to make sure there’s a system in place that protects everybody.” No-problem problem? Street vending has been a fixture of L.A. sidewalks for decades, despite being classified as a misdemeanor punishable by fines and up to six months of jail time. Members of the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign, which had been advocating for the rights of vendors for several years by the time the decriminalization ordinance passed, had often criticized L.A. for being the only large U.S. city where sidewalk selling was illegal. While the February ordinance did not legalize street vending anywhere in the city, it changed the activity from a criminal offense to a citation issue, explained West Valley Councilman Bob Blumenfield. That way, vendors who are in the country as undocumented immigrants will not risk deportation if they are caught selling food or other merchandise on a public sidewalk. “Someone getting deported because they sold a hot dog doesn’t seem right,” Blumenfield said. “You could end up in some serious hot water if you don’t pay the fine, but we want to make sure vending isn’t a crime you could get deported for.” Until new legislation is drawn up, street vendors who are reported to authorities will be subject to a $250 fine that doubles with each subsequent violation. The city attorney’s office has been tasked to work with police and other departments to develop a permitting system and regulatory framework that will outline rules for when and where street vending can take place, how infractions will be monitored and who will be able to give vendors permission to sell. “We gave pretty explicit instructions on what to include in the regulations,” explained Councilman David Ryu, who represents District 4 neighborhoods including Toluca Lake and Sherman Oaks. Though the first rendition of the statute is due in mid-April, he noted that changes will likely be made according to feedback from business owners. “It’s a tricky balance, because if we make the laws too restrictive, we risk people going underground,” Ryu said. Issues with street vending vary widely around the city, making it difficult to devise a “one-size-fits-all” solution for every neighborhood, he added. Blumenfield said he has encountered few problems with sidewalk sellers since taking office in 2013 – though he notes that the matter is still a pertinent one to the area, particularly with continued development around the Warner Center. “I want to make sure it continues to not be a problem in my district as the city moves forward,” he said. “We’ve been lucky here that it hasn’t been a big issue with folks in general.” Street vending has not yet created significant problems in Sherman Oaks, either, according to Ryu. Yet the no-problem profile could change now that street vending is legal, explained Village board member and property owner Row Zadeh. The stretch of Ventura Boulevard that comprises the Village at Sherman Oaks Business Improvement District has seen a jump in foot traffic in recent years because of efforts by area property owners, he said. “We spend a lot of money doing things to get people to want to come here, like washing the sidewalks, putting up posts with flower pots and planting trees in the median,” Zadeh said. “It took a lot of work to get it to this level.” That progress could quickly be reversed if sidewalk sellers, who didn’t contribute to the BID, move onto the boulevard, he believes. Prior to being revitalized under the business improvement district, the shopping centers and restaurants were practically deserted, Zadeh said. The consequences of street vending – more food in the garbage cans, sidewalks clogged with carts – would make it difficult to keep the area from regressing to its previous state or worse, he warned. “This place would be turned into downtown L.A.,” he said. “We already have a lot of homeless people here, and that would triple with all the extra food being thrown in the trash.” Establishing restaurants along the boulevard required the Village to convince the city to change the zoning from retail to restaurant, and business owners have invested thousands of dollars in remodeling the spaces to meet the city’s requirements. The upscale atmosphere of the Village makes it possible for businesses like Igloo Parlor to survive, Kesablyan explained. His concept of luxury “rolled” ice cream would be difficult to pull off elsewhere in the city, but it can gain traction in a neighborhood where the household income is nearly $106,000. “You can bring your family out here and walk around,” Kesablyan said. “That’s the kind of thing you want to preserve. If we take away the beauty of this place, those families won’t want to come here. They’ll find somewhere else to go – somewhere else to spend their money.” On the contrary, parts of Silver Lake and West Los Angeles have used street vendors to bring visitors to their brick-and-mortar stores, Espinoza said. “Brick-and mortar-businesses are now inviting vendors because they want to be an attraction,” he said. Cost concerns Kesablyan pays $4,000 a month to rent the 740-square-foot space for his business, not including utilities or extra fees charged by the Department of Transportation for parking spaces, which are in short supply along Ventura Boulevard. His costs are low compared to others in the Village, where rents for highly visible storefronts can run as high as $16,000 a month, according to Zadeh. But luxury businesses see the price as justifiable in exchange for access to the area’s affluent market, Kesablyan said. “You could go elsewhere in the Valley and rent a shop twice the size of some of these locations and pay less than half of the rent you pay here, but we’re willing to pay that because of the ambiance that (property owners) have generated,” he explained. “If you take that away, the premium will fall. Slowly you’ll see a degradation of the quality.” Even if shoppers and diners are not deterred by street vendors, their presence still poses a problem for businesses by creating unfair competition for customers, said Zadeh. In theory, an ice cream cart parked in front of Kesablyan’s shop could put him out of business. “We’ve just gotten to the point where our store is able to cover its own expenses, and that’s an achievement,” Kesablyan said. “But if an ice cream vendor starts selling right outside Igloo, that could take away 50 percent of my customers. After six months, I’d have to shut down.” Besides the fact that policies recommended by street vending advocates are explicitly designed to keep micro-businesses from disrupting the operation of brick-and-mortar stores, it also would be unfair for the city to block out vendors on the basis of competition, Espinoza said. Starbucks Coffee Co. is not prevented from opening up across the street from a mom-and-pop café, he noted. Still, as micro-businesses, street vendors have lower overhead expenses than brick-and-mortar stores, Kesablyan argued. While the price of a city permit to sell on the street has not yet been determined, it will likely be much less than the costs incurred from running a restaurant, especially in an area like the Village. The same logic extends to other retail sectors. As many as 40,000 street vendors in Los Angeles sell non-food items, such as clothes and toys. The popularity of online shopping has forced many of the Village’s retail stores out of business, said Elkan, president of the BID. Homeless or transient individuals often camp out in front of the vacant commercial spaces, creating an obstacle to bringing new tenants to an area that is already prohibitively expensive for small businesses. “A lot of our business owners in retail have to have a full-time job on the side because it’s really expensive,” she said. “These store owners are putting their whole lives into staying open.” The property owners have invested significant money, Elkan added, and well-kept sidewalks and landscaping has resulted from their contribution. “We haven’t done all this work for (street vendors) to come in and benefit from what we’ve built,” she said. “There’s a tremendous amount of private funds being spent to do this.” The street vendors involved with the campaign strongly desire to be part of community efforts like business improvement districts and would gladly front the cash to do so, Espinoza said. Up to this point, there’s simply been no way for them to do so. Solutions? Like Kesablyan, Elkan sympathizes with the concerns of immigrant street vendors and their supporters. Both believe there should be an alternative to legalizing the activity in communities where it could create problems for business owners, or where property owners and advocacy groups have invested resources into beautification. “They need to think of another way that isn’t on the backs of somebody else,” Elkan said. For her, Zadeh and other in the Village, the solution is simple: Districts should not be required to allow street vending if they do not wish to do so. “We want to opt out,” Zadeh said. “Street vending is already decriminalized – it’s a done deal. But we want to opt out.” Neighborhoods where street vendors are complementary to local businesses, such as parts of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, should be able to permit and regulate sidewalk commerce as they see fit, Elkan said. Property owners in other parts of Sherman Oaks may wish to welcome vendors into their neighborhood. “We’re not speaking for anybody else,” Elkan stressed. “Anyone who wants it, fine. We just don’t want it here.” Espinoza said the best approach would be to include vendors in establishing area-specific policies. “These are all types of entrepreneurs … street vendors should be at the table for these conversations,” he said. “(BIDs) shouldn’t be used as a tool to exclude. We’re trying to create policy where street vendors can contribute formally to these commercial corridors – right now they’re shut out, they’re criminalized for trying to build a business, and that’s wrong. We think we should include them in this system.”

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