Staff presents vendor code rewrite to govern food‑vendor courts and private property vendors

City planning staff on May 14 presented a comprehensive rewrite of the vendor code that would move land‑use elements currently in the business license chapter into Chapter 17 and introduce new definitions such as "vendor court" and "food vendor court." Johanna Blanco, planning coordinator, walked commissioners through the draft definitions and the proposed matrix that ties mitigation (location, size, hours) to the impacts being managed.

"Vendor court is, means a property where the primary use is to host 1 or more vendors," Blanco explained while describing how the city would regulate vendor courts through site plans and matrix thresholds. Staff said the rewrite is intended to reduce arbitrary thresholds and instead use ratio‑based regulation: for example, the draft ties parking to vendor court area at a rate of one parking space per 300 square feet of vendor court area and suggests minimum area calculations per vendor. The draft includes different pathways for "temporary private property vendors" (low‑effort, highly mobile uses) and more permanent vendor courts that would go through a site plan review process.

Staff emphasized the approach seeks to make vendor activity more feasible while retaining defensible impacts‑based mitigation: property owners would obtain the land‑use authorization and be responsible for infrastructure, while individual vendors would secure business licensing. Commissioners asked for clearer matrix numbers (many are placeholder values), and staff asked commissioners to solicit feedback from local vendor operators before the next meeting.

Next steps: staff will circulate an editable version of the draft and asked commissioners to gather input from local food‑truck operators and property owners so that the matrix values can be refined.