Push Comes to Shove for Cart Vendors : Policy: City will decide whether to allow sisters to keep selling expresso on downtown streets. Owners of two other pushcarts may also be affected.

The three sisters had been scouring the county for months in search of a location for a portable espresso bar business when they found what they considered the perfect spot.

The site on Main Street, in the blooming business district of downtown Huntington Beach, seemed just right for their outdoor pushcart business, with plenty of pedestrian traffic on a prime spot near the beach.

But their ideal setting for hawking coffee and muffins has turned into the focal point of a City Hall brouhaha.

At issue is how the city should deal with pushcart vendors. Huntington Beach does not have a clear policy regarding vendors who sell from pushcarts or kiosks, and many downtown merchants are hostile toward them.

At the heart of their objections is a concern that the vendors-on-wheels pose an unfair competition because they can often sell the same goods and services with little overhead, which translates into lower prices for consumers.

The coffee bar--which sisters Cathie Mullen, Suzanne Mullen and Pat Van Berckelaer established with an $18,000 investment--touched off the controversy, but the outcome will also determine the fate of two established portable vendors selling flowers and hot dogs.

The pushcart operators argue that they are not transient vendors, but legitimate business owners who enhance the area and attract more visitors.

The city has established a committee to study the dilemma and recommend a definitive policy to the City Council. Council members are scheduled to decide in April whether to ban or regulate pushcart vendors downtown, and perhaps citywide.

Meanwhile, the sisters last week were given a temporary business permit, which will expire when the council decides the issue. The council’s decision will also affect Kimberly Glick, who holds a regular business permit for her kiosk flower shop next to a public fountain on Main Street, and Ari Gati, who sells hot dogs in front of Pierside Pavilion.

For the next three months or so, then, the vendors are in limbo, not knowing whether they will be forced to set their pushcart wheels in motion and roll out of town.

“It’s scary, it’s really scary,” Glick said recently, standing beside her kiosk floral stand, Fleurs, which opened last November.

The coffee bar-owning sisters say they are similarly frustrated.

“It’s been a constant strain, not knowing if we’re doing all this for nothing,” Cathie Mullen said. “We sure didn’t feel welcome. But I guess that’s politics.”

The sisters dreamed up their coffee business about a year ago. They had acquired the necessary insurance and health permits and said city officials verbally approved a business permit.

Espresso a la Spiaggia--Italian for “espresso by the beach”--opened Dec. 26, facing the street from the storage space the sisters lease beneath the Main Promenade parking structure at Walnut Avenue. Once their business permit was issued, the cart was to be rolled out each day next to the fountain on Main, and each night kept in its storage space.

“There was no problem until the day we went down to get our vending permit,” Suzanne Mullen said. That’s when city officials “said there was a problem, that there was a little political flak over this now.”

Some merchants in the area--including four who also sell coffee, drinks and muffins--objected and took their complaints to the City Council.

Aside from saying the portable vendors posed an unfair competitive threat, the vendors argued that mobile businesses violate city law by operating on public property. But the vendors and Main Promenade co-owner Robert Koury insist that the area surrounding the public fountain is private property, so the carts should be considered legal.

“Just because the city’s allowed two illegal pushcarts doesn’t mean we need a third one,” said Nancy Wylie, secretary for the Huntington Beach Downtown Merchants Guild. The guild, which has about 200 members, officially opposes pushcarts and vendors unless they are extensions of existing businesses.

Existing city codes don’t adequately address the issue, said Ron Hagan, the city’s community services director.

“There are a number of inconsistencies in city policy,” Hagan said.

City regulations do not clearly state whether pushcarts and kiosks are allowed on private property, in public facilities or along public sidewalks.

So, at Hagan’s request, the City Council agreed to set up the committee to study the issue. The committee will include four city staff members and five representatives of downtown merchants, to be appointed by the council.

Having finally gotten a permit, although temporary, the sisters said they plan to roll out their coffee cart next to Glick’s flower stand. They say they believe that the outside vending carts will attract more visitors to downtown and enhance the “village” atmosphere city officials say they envision for the business district.

But Wylie disagrees.

“It’s starting to look like a carnival zone down here,” she said. “We’ve worked so hard to beautify our city and (downtown) redevelopment has come so far, to just trash it up now by not enforcing rules and regulations is a real sad issue.”