Cd'A food truck fiasco rolls toward resolution

As the city of Coeur d’Alene gets closer to finalizing regulations to deal with the onslaught of new food trucks cropping up around town, Pat Kinney isn’t wasting any time.

Kinney has revamped his parking lot between two of his businesses to accommodate nine food trucks with all the amenities they need to meet the city’s new guidelines. The Best Food Court sits between two of Kinney’s other businesses — Midway Kitchen Supply and Midway HVAC & Appliance Parts — in the 500 block of Best Avenue.

Meanwhile, the city is finalizing two years of work to get some level of regulation in place for the mobile food vendors.

“It’s been an interesting road to get here,” said Renata McLeod, Coeur d’Alene City Clerk. “When we first started this we thought wouldn’t it be nice if they could all come together in one spot and share expenses for things like parking water, sewer and bathrooms.”

Now that’s happening at Kinney’s food court, and the city couldn’t be more pleased.

McLeod said Kinney has come to the city for a project review and found that the city’s existing regulations would work for what he’s attempting to do.

In May, city staff presented the City Council with the progress they’ve made on food truck regulations. During that process the council asked staff to develop two sets of regulations. One set is to regulate what landowners must do to accommodate a food truck, and the other set is to regulate how the individual food truck owners will be allowed to operate.

McLeod said now that they’re pursuing the regulations on two tracks, the progress the city has made with Kinney could help fast-track the landowner regulations.

“In fact the food court regulations could move along on its own,” she said, adding the city expects to see at least one more food court project come in soon.

McLeod said regulating the individual food trucks is going to take a little longer.

“We got some good feedback from the council, so we want to work with the stakeholders on that and then come back,” McLeod said.

Kinney said his experience working with the city has been a good one.

“They have been working with us pretty well,” he said, adding some members of the city council have been helpful as well.

“I asked them to take a look at the city of Portland’s food truck regulations that have been working down there since 1998,” Kinney said. “They are at least looking at them.”

Kinney said he’s been meeting with different city departments to determine what he needs to do to make the food court a permanent use on the property.

He said the city is mainly concerned about fire codes and access, wastewater disposal and bathrooms.

“They would like us to dump wastewater into the sewer, but there is no access to the sewer there,” Kinney said, adding that the food trucks in his lot use holding tanks that are pumped out by a sewage disposal company every three days.

As for bathrooms, McLeod said Kinney could build a bathroom as an extension of his kitchen supply building.

Kinney has installed hookups for nine food trucks in the court. He already has seven in place. On the first weekend of June he held a grand opening at the food court to promote the food trucks.

So far, there is a Philly cheesesteak truck, a barbecue stand, a sushi truck, a French fusion truck, a roadside grill, a crepes truck and Taco Works, which started out at that location over a decade ago.

Kinney said the owner of Taco Works started out selling tacos with just a hot plate and a table. He grew the business and eventually moved into a shed on the property and later bought his first food trailer.

“He started with a real basic setup,” Kinney said. “And then he was in that trailer for 11 years.”

Kinney said at the beginning of this month, Taco Works bought a brand new larger trailer and now has a staff of six full-time employees.

“He has done pretty well for himself,” Kinney said.

McLeod said she hopes to have a draft set of regulations for both food courts and food trucks to present to the council within the next month or so.