The Grand Rapids City Commission today set a June 6 public hearing on three proposed adjustments to the City's Pilot Food Truck Ordinance.

The City Commission will consider the proposed policy amendments at their June 13, 2017 meeting.

The proposed changes aim to continue making Grand Rapids a more food truck friendly city by further streamlining the City’s regulatory process, lowering fees for food truck businesses and supporting more efficient use of the City’s on-street parking system. The changes were developed by the Food Truck Policy Work Group and presented to the City Commission by the City Attorney's Office and Downtown Grand Rapids Inc.

Specifically, the proposed adjustments include:

• Enabling food trucks to simply pull up and “feed the meter” in designated Food Truck Opportunity Areas. The current Pilot Ordinance requires trucks to reserve spaces in advance through the City's Meter Hooding Program. The proposed change provides trucks and City staff with more flexibility and a significant reduction in the cost of doing business. If approved, this change will lower the fee by approximately 50 percent for food truck businesses providing 4 hours of service from a metered location.

• Significantly lowering the fee to operate temporarily at metered on-street spaces outside of designated Food Truck Opportunity Areas. By shifting oversight from the Clerk’s Office to Mobile GR, this proposed change would lower the fee by 80 percent for food truck businesses.

• Adding a few new Food Truck Opportunity Areas because the Uptown Corridor Improvement District recommended two locations and a few Downtown locations originally approved remain inaccessible to trucks due to construction and various unforeseen circumstances.
  • In Downtown, the proposed additional locations include Crescent Park, the Fulton Street Bridge, Kendall College locations at both Ionia and Fountain streets.
  • In Uptown, the proposed locations include Cherry Park and Fulton Street Farmer’s Market.

The proposed changes would amend the Pilot Food Truck Ordinance adopted by City Commission. The Pilot Ordinance, adopted in August 2016, enabled food truck businesses - for the first time - to serve customers by parking in designated Food Truck Opportunity Areas, which currently includes city parks, curbside along city streets and other city-owned public rights-of-way areas.

Consistent with the experimental nature of a pilot program, and the community's interest in iterating effective public policy, the proposed policy changes are based on lessons learned since the Pilot Ordinance was first implemented 8 months ago.

The Public Hearing on the proposed changes will occur at City Commission's Community Night Out Meeting: 7:00 PM on Tuesday June 6, 2017 at Salvation Army KROC Center (2500 S. Division Avenue).