Street Vendors Study in College ‘Kitchen’ : Van Nuys: Opening of college’s culinary arts training center is hailed as step toward legitimizing food peddling.

After years of worrying about being cited for cooking food in their homes that they would then sell on the street, about 40 sidewalk vendors Thursday celebrated the opening of a Van Nuys kitchen where they will learn to properly prepare food.

Advocates of vending said the opening of Mission College’s Business and Professional Center’s Culinary Arts Training Kitchen was a step toward legitimizing the street vending trade, often cited for unsanitary food preparation.

“This is the first time they are going to get some hands-on experience with a chef,” said Penny Young, the center’s director, as the vendors served free chicken tamales, melons and steaming corn during the lunchtime celebration. “It’s not a restaurant. It’s a training facility. They will not be using it to prepare food for street vending, just to learn.”

The facility, located in the 14500 block of Lanark Street, will be used beginning next semester to conduct classes for the professional center’s street vending entrepreneurial program, Young said.

The project began last fall in a community room without any cooking facilities in a Blythe Street apartment building. The new site, rented for about $1,200 a month by the college, is a converted chicken restaurant featuring a classroom, massive stove, ovens, chopping counters, freezers and wash basins.

“Here, we have more opportunity to cook things,” said Luis Negrete, 35, a Panorama City graduate of the Mission College course, who turned to selling tamales when his trucking business collapsed four years ago. “The place is cleaner. This is going to help a lot. We want to cook food correctly.”

Sponsored by a $250,000 grant from the Industry and Commercial Development Department of Los Angeles, the classes are designed to teach vendors about sanitation, food storage and proper cooking techniques, in compliance with county health codes.

Last fall, inspectors from the county health department cited several Blythe Street residents for illegally preparing food for sale. A truckload of cooking equipment was confiscated.

Although illegal for years, street vending has recently been given a second look by city officials. In January, the Los Angeles City Council approved a two-year pilot project to create eight special vending districts in the city.

In April, a group of northeast Valley vendors, many of them trainees in the Mission College program, formed the Street Vendors Assn. of the San Fernando Valley to campaign for a district in the Valley.

The group is still seeking the required signatures of 20% of the property owners in the zone and payment of a $1,000 fee per vendor, said Genny Alberts, the group’s spokeswoman.