L.A. Looks for a Palatable Solution to Street Vending : Business: A ban hasn’t worked. Hearing is set on a plan to legalize and regulate the city’s sidewalk merchants.

The warm smell of grilled corn wafts from a sidewalk barbecue. Bells jangle on the cart of a paletero, an ice cream vendor. And a middle-aged man sits on a tarp in a vacant lot, fervently singing the praises of the wrenches, pliers and screwdrivers spread before him.

To the 5,000 street vendors of Los Angeles, mostly immigrants from Latin America, these are the sounds and images of their native lands and of fledgling entrepreneurship in their new home.

But for many of the city’s more entrenched inhabitants, they are the symbols of blight, unfair business competition and a public health hazard. “It’s like a Third World country,” said one angry homeowner. “This is not what the United States is about.”

Selling from sidewalks and streets is illegal in the city of Los Angeles. But the immigration boom and simultaneous contraction of the job market have resulted in a dramatic increase in street merchants--selling fruit at freeway on-ramps, hawking used clothes on vacant lots and pushing tamale carts around the city.

Simply banning the vendors hasn’t worked--the police are usually too busy with violent crime to make arrests for what is a simple misdemeanor violation of the Municipal Code.

So now, many Los Angeles officials have decided, if you can’t stop them, regulate them. Friday, the City Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing on a proposed two-year pilot project to legalize street vending, while imposing a host of restrictions and limiting the activity to a few commercial districts.

Lawmakers in Los Angeles, and in many other Southern California cities, have found that tackling the issue of street vending means reconciling a confusion of competing values. Vendors want a legal way to break into the mainstream economy, but established merchants say they are unfair competitors. Urban planners want to promote street life and a cosmopolitan atmosphere, but homeowners complain about noise, garbage and shabby pushcarts. Customers relish a freshly grilled taco or an intricately carved mango, but health inspectors fear contamination and the spread of disease.

Underlying much of the debate is the strong emotional undertow of ethnic relations and the national controversy over immigration.

The latest outcry against vending came Wednesday from a group of Korean Americans and black shop owners who stood on the steps of City Hall, waving American flags and claiming that the mobile merchants are unfairly cutting into their livelihoods.

Many cities have already acted to check sidewalk salesmanship. In Burbank, street vending was banned this year and a proposal subsequently floated to allow the seizure of illegal carts. In Anaheim, the City Council last month passed a law reducing vending hours and forcing pushcart merchants to change locations every 10 minutes. In heavily Latino Santa Ana, the number of vendors permitted to operate in the city was capped at 200.

Other cities, though, are heading in the opposite direction. In Bell Gardens, another heavily Latino city, officials recently reversed a longstanding ban on vending. And Santa Monica legalized vending in special districts five years ago. It is now so popular on the thriving Third Street Promenade, an outdoor mall, that merchants pay $600 a month and 5% of their receipts to park their pushcarts there.

Progress has been slower in Los Angeles, and the proposed ordinance much more complex.

Repeated run-ins between the Police Department and vendors and allegations that the police have used excessive force have fueled calls by vendors and their advocates to legalize their trade.

Vendors came together six years ago to fight the alleged abuses, formalizing their organization in 1989 as the Street Vendors Assn. They gained an important champion in then-City Councilman Mike Woo. But it took the next three years for a task force to report on the issue and for the City Council to give conceptual approval to legalized street vending.

The final push toward legalization began in July with the arrival on the City Council of two vendor supporters, Richard Alarcon and Jackie Goldberg. The council members gained a powerful and unexpected ally in the Central City Assn., a downtown business alliance that has suggested modifications to make the vending ordinance palatable to business.

Under the proposal that is likely to come to a vote Wednesday, vending in most of the city will remain a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Street sales would be limited to a maximum of eight special districts and would remain illegal in all residential areas.

The special districts would be formed under an exhaustive application process, in which vendors would have to receive approval from 20% of the business people and residents on blocks where they want to operate. Individual merchants would have absolute veto power over placement of carts in front of their own stores.

The ordinance also requires City Council members to appoint advisory committees in each of the proposed vending districts, with vendors, shop owners, police and others to draw up a comprehensive plan for regulating street sales. The plans would then be forwarded to the city’s Board of Public Works, which would have the final say on creating districts.

No districts have been designated yet, although the Street Vendors Assn. and others have suggested possibilities: at Santa Monica Boulevard and Western Avenue in Hollywood, along parts of Van Nuys and Sepulveda boulevards in Van Nuys, around MacArthur Park, west of downtown, on Pico Boulevard near the Westside Pavilion shopping center and on Vermont Avenue in South-Central Los Angeles.

The two-year life of the districts would be extended, and districts added in other neighborhoods, only if the City Council deemed the arrangement successful.

For shop owners like Peter Martinez, a spokesman for many business people on Olvera Street, the need for regulation of vending is clear. Martinez said businesses along the historic shopping mall suffered two years ago with the proliferation of vendors around nearby La Placita Catholic Church.

“It was just out of hand,” Martinez said, noting that the vendors do not have to pay rent, taxes and other expenses that permanent merchants do. “People have built their lives in these businesses and for someone just to come in like that, I don’t think it’s fair.”

When the vendors were moved away by police, business jumped nearly 50% for Olvera Street’s taquito stands, Martinez said.

His complaints are echoed by some merchants along Brooklyn Avenue in Boyle Heights, on Broadway in Downtown and elsewhere, although many say they can live with vending that is well regulated.

They are backed by residents with a shopping list of aesthetic complaints--from some who say the bells and cries of the vendors disturb them to others who are appalled by makeshift used-clothing sales that crop up on chain-link fences around the city.

“But when you look out your window and you see someone from who-knows-where coming to sell their wares, I think it is awful,” said Kathy Cheeseman of Windsor Village in central Los Angeles. “It is unbelievable the city has allowed this to happen.”

But vendors and their allies say they are confused and troubled by such sentiments.

Abel Cardenas, at 54, is the elder statesman among the 10 vendors who squat each day on an empty lot in Avalon.

Times are tough. A few days before, Cardenas explains, he saw two days of earnings wiped out when Building and Safety inspectors issued him an $81 citation for operating on private property.

But he said the street merchants are very aware that they must do more to fit into their environment.

They have already taken up a collection to clean up their trash at the end of the day. They point customers and fellow vendors to toilet facilities in the park, rather than bushes in the corner of the empty lot. Cardenas said he would even share his profits with nearby store owners if they think his sales of new and used tools are cutting into their business.

At least he is not on welfare, he says.

“We are just trying to make a living,” he said. “I don’t understand why we are being persecuted.”

Through the city’s sidewalk vending administrator, Robert Valdez, many of the vendors know that they may soon have a chance to go legal. They have many worries, including how they will raise the $1,300 to $2,600 for permits and a legal pushcart.

But most are like Refugio Rolon, who recently tended a steaming kettle of corn on Echo Park Boulevard. Rolon, 56, said she was a vendor near Mexico City and has been one here since she arrived 10 years ago.

“At my age, I can’t find something else to do,” Rolon said. “I will pay all the costs and do whatever I have to. As long as they let me work. I want to work.”

The final obstacle to approval of the ordinance is the desire of many council members to draw a comprehensive plan for policing street vending before the practice is legalized. They argue that inspections will be needed in the districts to make sure vendors abide by the rules. And they say illegal vending outside the districts must be stopped, not only to assuage community complaints, but to force vendors to operate in the legal zones.

Councilwoman Rita Walters said she will insist that a comprehensive enforcement plan is in place before the law passes. “It has gotten so prevalent that it just cries out for some control,” Walters said. “Otherwise, it just becomes part of the general decline and decay.”

The Los Angeles Police Department has estimated that it will take the equivalent of 36 officers citywide to put the clamps on illegal vending. A special order from the City Council would be required to direct those officers to concentrate on the misdemeanor offense, instead of on more serious crimes, said LAPD Cmdr. Scott LaChasse.

Councilwoman Goldberg and other vending supporters agree that better control of vending is necessary, but they hesitate to delay the vending ordinance to wait for a plan.

“What other law have we passed in this city where we said let’s wait until we know how we are going to enforce it?” Goldberg said. “We didn’t do it with smoking (which was recently banned in restaurants). We didn’t do it when we made it illegal to sell a knife to a minor. Some people will use this as a wedge . . . to block the law.”

Street Sales

Selling merchandise on Los Angeles streets and sidewalks is currently illegal. Under a proposal to be considered by the City Council, vendors would obtain permits to sell food and other items in as many as eight special districts, which have not yet been determined. Here are other elements of the street vending proposal.

PROPOSED RULES

* Location: Continue to ban vending on all residential streets and on commercial streets outside vending districts.

* District approval: Require that 20% of business owners on a commercial block give their approval before a street-vending district can be approved.

* Business approval: Allow permanent businesses to veto street vending directly in front of their locations.

* Site: Require vendors to remain at a single approved location.

* Councils: Establish community advisory councils of business people, vendors, police and city officials to set rules for each vending district. The councils might, for example, set the hours of operation for vendors.

* Carts: Require vendors to sell their products from city-approved carts.

* Paperwork: Order vendors to purchase insurance, pay business taxes and obtain permits from the county Department of Health Services.

START-UP COSTS

The proposed street-vending ordinance would require a significant investment from vendors. Below are the estimated start-up costs under the proposal: * City-approved cart: $400-$1,500 * City operating permit: $439 * County health permit: $198-$354 * Insurance: $150-$200 * Business license: $110 * Miscellaneous: $35-$40 * TOTAL: $1,332-$2,643